It must have happened to you sometimes .....
As a surgeon, I (Dr.
Dhaval Mangukiya) interact with a lot of new people every day. I need to
discuss every issue from reporting the patient's condition to medicine,
treatment, economic issues, social problems. And, since my job is to perform a
very complex surgery, it is natural that they have a lot of worries and
questions. I try to give complete satisfaction to everyone with as much
patience and care as possible. I am writing a similar case. The patient's
relatives were sitting in front of me for pancreatic cancer surgery. The
discussion about the need, procedure, time, recovery and associated risk of
surgery lasted a long time. I spoke for about 20 minutes and tried to explain everything
to them in plain language. After saying this, I stopped and I put the decision
on them for surgery, the gentleman sitting in front of me said that our close
friend was sitting outside. Explain it to them too ...... I was quite
completely for some time. I asked him why he was not called before, he said we
did not have to declare the disease to all but if it is such a difficult
surgery then we should just tell our friend who is in our best interest. I
patiently gave this understanding a second time and once again left the
decision on him but now this so-called friend of mine threw another bomb at me
....... his words were “sir you explained everything nicely and the talk went
down well. But one of our distant relatives has a friendship with many doctors,
so explain this whole thing to him on the phone”.
Probably most of us get
irritate by this kind a situation. But that is not possible for me when I am a
doctor, so now I have changed so much that before explaining about any patient,
I ask multiple times to call if there is any close relative, friend or
well-wisher, I will wait in peace. I am sure many of my doctor friends must
have come to this situation. Not just Doctors actually in other professions
too, many people must have experienced such cases sometimes. If yes, tell
everyone.
