I have written on various topics from political sphere. I forgot to write about something which was horribly wastage of scarce resources, and has been part of my life. Today I came across few posts regarding internship, which reminded me to decorate my blog with one posts regarding "golden phase" of my life. I don't want to use this phrase for this period but it was the phrase used my our Hon. H.O.D. on the very first day of our internship. Soon, "golden phase" got transformed in to "dark phase". If you can show patience to read the whole article, you will realize how 12 months of life of young budding doctor is wasted.
Community medicine posting is considered to be the most important from public health point of view. We are supposed to understand the problems of primary health care. What we learn is "How to pack tablets?" We are posted at urban health care centers. Government has money for all stupid and idiotic projects, but it can not provide 2 pharmacists at UHC. Interns are supposed to pack tablets and dispense. I would like to request MCI to issue some guidelines in this regard. This may be working experience for pharmacy graduate not for medical graduate. Next we were supposed to work at PHCs. I am going to skip this part, as writing true observations made over there might result in some legal problems. I would like to request gvt of India to scrap NRHM, because good chunk of dear money of taxpayers are wasted. I never found parity between number of children at aanganwadi enumerated and actual number attending aanganwadis.
Before going to Paediatrics department I had heard that we are supposed to clean desks and arrange books in bookshelf. I checked MCI guidelines regarding internship but nowhere I could find this work. I was lucky to get respite from this job as due to grace of God that HOD retired the day before I had joined. Interns are made to accompany each and every patient irrespective of number of relatives. It's not that patients were critical and needed a doctor to accompany.But accompanying intern would ensure that investigation is performed at the earliest. I was privileged to get one honorable job to do. I accompanied one friend of HOD for his medical check up. There are many more works to be mentioned. I don't think these works help us to become good clinicians.
Coming to department of Ob.&Gy. I don't have much to write about this posting as I was posted in coolest unit. It was as good as 30days' holiday. With help of other friends who were not as fortunate as me I could compile some works which we are supposed to do. Report tracing is one of the most common work allotted to interns. This is true for not only this department but also for whole of internship. Report tracing is in no way helpful to become doctor, apart from getting completion. I don't have much of personal experience of harassment in this department so I cant not write much. But I would like to say giving holiday is also not way to train doctors. One positive aspect was we got good practice of BP measurement in ANC clinic.
Coming to peripheral hospitals. It was one posting which I consider to be fruitful. It was consolation that not whole 12 months were wasted. We got lot of clinical experience. If anything needs mention is attitude of medical officers. I felt that this is only job where one is paid for coming and sleeping (specially during nights).
Orthopaedicians are too busy to notice interns. If accidentally they spot any intern they will try to get rid of him by sending him for some report tracing. They are so greedy for practice they don't even teach splinting to interns. On emergency days we spend whole day getting bored outside OT. I got work to take care of "sample drugs" given by MRs. I was not benefited clinically by this job. Yeah I got some painkillers for free.
Surgery posting was another "honeymoon" posting for me. Surprisingly I did not get even a dressing in whole 30 days' posting. Neither did I get an opportunity to learn volume resuscitation or any emergency procedure. I went to OT only once, not to assist in some surgical procedure but to hand over some reports to my resident.
Nothing to say short postings. These are done on paper only. Casualty posting means "PA of CMO" and ECG technician. Elective posting was never elective. It was forced on us. None of us had opted for "Malaria surveillance". Later on we realized that we had done radiology posting, but only on paper.
Medicine was good posting. We actually learnt few things.
Effectively interns are supposed to do "blood collection, report tracing, accompanying patients for investigation, getting appointments on behalf of patients, in worse cases to accompany relatives and pvt patients of seniors." I don't think These help us in becoming good doctors. I don't want this post to be very popular, because it might cause panic among poor people who would be our patients in future.
I would like to request MCI to do something to make internship more effective than wasting 365 days of our lives.
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