DOCTORS NOT GIVING ENOUGH TIME SAYS,W.H.O

Going through the Times of India yesterday I came across a WHO report that

on an average ,doctors in developing countries spend less than 60 seconds

in prescribing medicines and explaining the regimen to their patients.

How true I thought to myself .In India you wait for hours for your turn to come

and when you actually come face to face with a doctor and even before you start explaining your malady he starts scribbling the illegible prescription and if you ask him twice he gives you that piteous… hey ! nincompoop look, pointedly looking at his watch

 and you dare not ask him a third time if you still have a doubt with the fear that he might actually harm you psychologically with a statement that well this is all he can do and you could go andfurther experiment with another doctor or hospital .

Hence your long wait comes to an abrupt end and you walk out of the cubicle less wiser  nursing a discontent of inadequate information ,after meeting the  doctor who with his supercilious know –it-all air ,has made no dent in your psyche about curing you… leaves you high and dry both in terms of  half baked knowledge he has conferred on you with medical terms and steep bill

 of the medicines prescribed and some tests to be done. All information deferred till future date he has asked you to revert back to him.

By the time you reach home you are a bundle of nerves trying to figure out when to take what of the umpteen medicines prescribed. So you dial the doctor’s number with trepidation and are relieved to find it

is engaged ,just when you think of disconnecting it a crisp businesslike voice of his answers ….and you stutter out your introduction trying to be helpful and save his time and he patiently… read impatiently… unravels the

mystery of administering the drugs …. Helplessly you listen forcing your brain to switch on to the photographic memory mode! Suddenly you hear  the closing question anything else and you reply to a hung phone !

 Actually India is  all about numbers  and the doctors who have become renowned for their Midas touch are a overworked lot

and for them wasting time with one patient is wasting money!

On the other hand the patients sometimes feel cheated in terms of time ,faith ,money .. yet try to be their humble best...

 paying obeisance to these demi-Gods lest they mess up their cases!