Krishna Kumar: Doctors and teachers carry on with their duties, no matter what crisis engulfs the world

How doctors make sense of their life is hardly a mystery. Their profession gives them a high social status. Regular opportunity to put their knowledge into practice gives them professional satisfaction. In addition, there is personal satisfaction in healing or at least helping people when they are feeling miserable. No matter what branch or type of medical practice they are in, doctors follow a stressed routine and carry on their work, no matter what the circumstances or state of the patient. 

Surgeons are probably more stressed than general practitioners, but the difference is only of degree. Anyone who sees people in pain and discomfort on a daily basis cannot avoid the feeling that he or she is carrying a burden. The range of human misery a doctor encounters daily and attempts to address by choosing appropriate remedies is vast and therefore, stressful. Doctors who serve in wars are perhaps inspired by the same kind of positive emotions and sense of duty that soldiers have. The injuries suffered by the latter have a rationale — in the idea of the nation and its borders.



No such thing can be said about injuries suffered in a communal riot. It troubles me to think how doctors feel when they face people wounded during a violent riot such as the one Delhi witnessed in the last days of February. A sense of duty alone cannot explain the relentless effort many doctors made to treat people brought in from riot-ravaged Northeast Delhi with wounds caused by guns, knives and fire. Surely, these doctors must have wondered whether their long and demanding training in health and medicine deserved to be utilised in this way....
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/coronavirus-lockdown-doctors-healthcare-workers-safety-teachers-6376373/






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