“People pay the doctors for his trouble; for his kindness, they still remain in his debt.”
– Seneca
Introduction
1st July is known as National Doctor’s Day in India and it is organized by the Indian Medical Association. The theme for this year is “Save the Saviours”. The profession of a doctor is full of responsibility to serve the public, and they play a huge role in everyone’s life. We enter the world because of the successful delivery by a doctor, we are safe from the viruses because we get vaccinated by doctors, we recover from our sickness by the consultation of a doctor, doctors perform surgeries on us to keep us alive, and the most important, it is because of the research of these doctors that we now have a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2.
History of the Day
This day was declared as Doctor’s Day in 1991 by the Government of India in honor of Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy’s birth and death anniversary. Dr. B.C. Roy is famously known for making good health services available to common people. He played a huge role in the creation of two very important medical institutions of the country; the Indian Medical Association in 1928 and the Medical Council of India in 1933. He is also known for helping in the creation of the Indian Institute of Mental Health. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna on February 4, 1961, a year before his demise.
A few facts about his life; he had to take 30 meetings with the dean of St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London to gain admission because the dean was not too inclined to admit him. He graduated in 1911, after which he became a member of the Royal College of Physicians and a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. He entered politics after returning from London and took part in the Civil Disobedience Movement. He was a friend of Mahatma Gandhi and took care of him during the 21-day fast. After Independence, he became the Governor of Uttar Pradesh and a year later, he was the second Chief Minister of West Bengal and he served till his death on 1st July 1962. And the B.C. Roy National Award was instituted in 1976, it is the highest Indian award in the medical category.
Mental Health of Doctors
The theme of “Save the Saviours” should not just be to save the doctors from violence but also from the mental health issues they face. An IMA survey claims that 80% of doctors in India are stressed because of their profession. This is not a new problem that arose because of the pandemic, it has been an issue from a long time without getting much attention. A survey conducted by IMA in 2017 shows that 56% of doctors do not get comfortable 7-hour sleep most days. Other studies from 2019 show that 30% of Indian doctors go through depression and 80% face the risk of burnout. It was studied that India’s doctor-patient ratio is very high which brings stress to the doctors related to extended working hours, verbal/emotional abuse by the patients and frequent negative patient outcomes. This stress can then result in prescription errors, loss of temper, being unable to give sufficient time to patients and poor communication skills. But the doctors tend to refuse to seek professional help as it might affect their prospects as a doctor. The doctors are also trained to mask their pain and deal with it themselves which is not healthy. The overtime and overexertion are just normalized and expected that people forget how it affects our doctors. As we focus on saving our saviours, we should also normalize mental health issues and accept and promote doctors seeking professional health, these saviours deserve to save themselves too.
Violence Against Doctors
Violence against Doctors has been in existence from a long time but the pandemic has just brought more attention because of the role the doctors have been playing. The World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines of 2002 define workplace violence as incidents where the employees are abused, threatened, assaulted or subjected to offensive behaviour in circumstances related to their work. An IMA survey shows that 75% of doctors have faced some form of violence in their profession, which includes verbal, emotional, sexual, and cyber abuse. About 62.8% of doctors are unable to see patients without having a fear of violence, 13.7% of doctors fear criminal prosecution and 57.7% of the doctors have thought of hiring society. When the national lockdown was announced in March 2020, the common people were filled with panic and anxiety and they started acting out on the health care workers, they started discriminating against the doctors, not touching them, not letting them buy fruits from the stall, treating them as polluted, not just this but also physical abuse. Two female doctors were beaten by a fruit seller when he found out their profession. All this forced the Indian government to make an ordinance to protect the frontline workers, but even this could not protect them, in June 2020, a doctor at Hyderabad’s facility was assaulted by the relatives of the patient. Not just that, in June 2021, a doctor in Assam was punched, kicked and hit with metal trash cans by the relatives of a patient. This has become a common thing in India and a part of the reason is because of the lack of responsibility taken by the government in the health sector, so everything falls upon the doctors to deal with it. Till when do doctors have to suffer for protecting us? When will we realize that they are working for the public, they are trying to help us, they put themselves in danger every day to protect us and they get this treatment for it? This isn’t just an issue for existing doctors but also for the future doctors who keep worrying about being in situations where they are abused and the fear, in turn, changes the focus from saving the patient to saving themselves. Adding to that they start wondering if it is a country-based issue which then makes them consider further education abroad.
Conclusion
It is high time we start appreciating doctors for their service to the public and this Doctor’s Day is a good time to start if you haven’t already. Our saviours need to be saved.
Eduindex News 
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