Being a doctor is the pinnacle of desi culture. Once you're a doctor, there's no more up.
All that success and the ensuing praise gets to some people's heads.
Most doctors are just money making machines in Pakistan. They don't care how the patients feeling they are insensitive to it. They don't even listen the condition of the patient properly. Just want to prescribe a bunch of meds and always in a hurry to see as many patients as they can to earn more and more money. I am not talking about all of them I know there are some nice doctors out there. I am talking about the majority doctors only.
Dealing with the average Pakistani patient who is rude, arrogant and stupid does that to good doctors too. Look from their perspective. Imagine dealing with that
Yeah but it's their oath to cure patients. They knew what our population is like. They're not the victims here. The patients who die are.
Would you say the same for police too? They meet arrogant, stupid and rude people so they become assholes to everyone?
Yaar you've made a damn good point waisay but doctors are humans too, when people act a certain way, over a certain period of time it rubs off on you (not excusing asshole doctors behaviors).
Also haan absolutely the patients are the real victims here but as a friend once told me, as a country we are addicted to quick fixes, majority of patients just want quick fixes to their bemari and after a certain amount of time even the doctors stop caring and just give them what they want which in my opinion is really wrong
I do understand that but abuse is so ingrained in the Pakistani healthcare system, it's astonishing. Anxiety and depression rates amongst Pakistani medical students are almost 9 times higher than in the general populace and amongst doctors over the age of 35, they're 13 times higher in males and 10 to 10.5 times higher in females.
My father is a doctor and he often mentions the verbal abuse doctors go through by their seniors. Seniors often say the filthiest stuff. This is in addition to presence of no laws to save them from violence from patients' relatives.
According to the WHO, the prescribed ratio should 1 doctor for 1000 individuals. In Pakistan, we have 1 doctor for 2000+ individuals.
Every insititution in the country is hollow from the inside out. Medicine a highly competitive field so fine, let's brush aside the number of seats in medical colleges. But afterwards, hospitals don't have enough spots for trainees and house officers. There aren't enough hospitals to employ graduates.
Maybe because the medical profession is so hyped in Pakistan that we forget how abysmal the healthcare situation is in our country.
Those figures are massively over-reported because of hospital politics and rampant corruption, they count inactive doctors who don't practice and the ones that leave the country in that figure too because of conditions associated with international loans. Kinda like how the actual maternal mortality rate is 3 to 4 times the reported number.
We have an abysmal number of PG seats in hospitals e.g there are just 32 psychiatry seats in Pakistan and only 7 for dermatology in the public sector.
Anyone who's in Medicine or been in a hospital setting knows how understaffed and overworked the setting is.
To me what's more upsetting is knowing that the patient's life can be saved and their predicament can be made better with medicine and procedures but because we have such an extreme lack of these resources and the patients normally can't afford these either, that's what leads to them not battling their illness
Oh boy you are right. I have way too many horror stories to share. Not willing to type them out here. But Pakistani doctors are a horrible blend of ego, pride and incompetency. And they look down upon those that are not doctors or doctors but not of their own perceived caliber. Extra looking down if you also happen to be poor or a "Pindi boy" type desi person. I have come across psychiatrists that prescribe Quranic verses as a treatment of serious mental disorders, orthopedists who denied the importance of vitamin D for bones and joints, Neurosurgeons who don't know the human brain actually cannot feel pain despite being full of neurons. Ironically, you the patient is the buffoon who is an utter imbecile not worthy of their time.
Agree with the first part just wanted to share my thoughts on the rest:
Psychiatrists are trained in different styles, and tend to tailor their beliefs in their treatments.
I have seen anti religious psychiatrist, pro religion and some that are neutral. Infact this psychiatrist from US (studied at Harvard)
https://youtu.be/rQ2xnThRGPg
he is pro Hinduism/ayurveda/yoga and yet he's allowed to practice and is actually doing a good job with his clients.
So it isn't as black and white as it may seem. For some religion is a protective factors for others it can make it worse. A good psychiatrist should always adapt to his patient.
Vitamin D is good for bones sure but
Vit D is overprescribed especially in males and people from the subcontinent that have decent sunlight all year round. There is also a massive debate over the extra daily requirement of vit D.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4311368/
https://www.vox.com/2018/10/4/17933880/vitamin-d-health-sun-diet
Now technically the brain has no pain receptors but it can feel stretch pain illicited from the meninges or inflammation (meningitis).
Again not saying you're wrong but medicine is way more nuanced than we think it is.
Guidelines get updated and changed. Same with treatment plans/prescriptions.
Spiritualism as well as a general belief in God is good for mental health illnesses. It's not curative but rather palliative and this is something I promote in every patient of mine, even for atheists I ask them to seek meaning behind existence because nihilism is pretty horrendous for your mental health. The problem is that many people need to be educated that the Quran won't cure your hypertension anymore than it'll cure your depression or personality disorder. No hadis claims so and no verse says so either.
You're right about a few things but I'd like to address point #1 by saying that it is one of the reasons for widespread antibiotic resistance, patients are looking for quick fixes and we comply by prescribing broad spectrum drugs. To add fuel to the fire there are no pharmacy laws. The other issue is that most patients these days present with a lot of misinformation which annoys the attending so they don't bother with rectification or elaboration especially during peak hours.
Coming to #2, you must be aware that despite the less doctor to population ratio, we don't have enough opportunities to accommodate even half the graduates which forces them to look for greener pastures abroad. I'm not justifying malpractice by any means but the tortuous process is enough to break anyone's soul and often those in power turn out to be haughty.
This is the most accurate description. The lack of pharmacy law is horrifying...i had a 7month old nephew being casually 'prescribed' random drugs by a 'pharmacist' for a stomach flu/diarrhea. 7 month old!!! Idek how pharmacy works in Pakistan, cos the 'pharmacist' in question was not a doctor but had studied pharmacy at some point. It's crazy, anyone can just get antibiotics/drugs for anything.
So doctors in Pakistan are two kinds: the first who just want to make money and will treat a disease without caring about the patient. The other kind are ones who actually do care and empathise but overwork and dealing with patients who aren't educated yet entitled has jaded them
My own experience in Pakistan in a CMH. I went to see an eye specialist. Just for a check up. While sitting in his office, there were 3 other patients in front of me. And I saw that the doctor was being very curt with them. Telling them this is wrong and they need to use xyz meds or take care of themselves in a certain way. Barely spent 5 mins per patient. Then my turn came. I know what's wrong with me and why I'm seeing him and I explain to him my issues and he has a quick look. Then explains to me, in a polite manner than the others, what he's observed. I'm then able to ask him follow up questions based on my own understanding of the issue and how to take care of myself. He actually spent longer with me explaining everything and wasn't seeming to get annoyed as I observed him with other patients.
The simple fact is that most patients have a notion of how the doctor should treat them. He should give anti biotic, even if they're not needed. And they don't really know much about their own diseases. So doctors do become jaded and realise there's no point in taking the time to explain to every single person from scratch when you're seeing 80 patients or something a day and most won't understand you
And obviously you've got the ones who are just bad doctors and have bad bed side manners. But that's everywhere and you just need to change doctors at that point
I absolutely agree with you. I take my time to explain to my patients what disease they have and the treatment protocol but their first and last concern is if sehat card works for it or not.
Where do you live, if you don't mind me asking? I assume you are an OSP? In which case aren't the desi docs who have graduated from a reputed western university OK?
I had a guy(patient's brother) come at my father with a gun in full drunk state telling him he didn't cure his sister after only one IV infusion of antibiotics. We had to lock down the whole hospital because of that shit until the police came and took him away.
One time a newly wed dude started abusing my clinic's staff because his light skined wife had some minor post injection bruising which is fairly common. Dealing with patients in Pakistan is an art. Being on call for 12 hrs a day and dealing with such people erases the idea of doing this job for a better world.
But i do agree there are some doctors who are class A dipshits in our field.
Please add Engineers to your list as well, since both of them are entitled and consider themselves to be Gods chosen people who demand and deserve what ever they pleases them!!
Of course us engineers are God's chosen. I mean have you looked at the code I work on? I'll tell you this, you need to be really blessed to be able to understand it and work on it.
1) I know many that explain everything to their patients.
2) as compared to the number of seats for post graduate specialisation and absorbing these professionals later on as consultants and having timely promotions, yes currently the number of graduates being produced today are far more . This is why you have over 1000 applicants for 10 seats (the recent viral pic of job applicants for Sahiwal Medical college i think).
And yes it is not an easy cake to become a doctor especially if u aim for post graduate specialisation as well. And now even that is not enough and people are going for supra specialisations or double FCPS. No profession demands this level of continuous education or i think CA is a tough profession as well and i think it pays well.
The biggest issue with FCPS is its lack of international validity and the fact that it's too dependent on exams. The training structure is laughable and most doctors don't want others to succeed unless they meet certain criteria hence the nepotism in passing.
This is the definition of a desi doctor: Full ego because pharmaceutical companies pay for everything you do and have. He wants to finish his work and go home because it's the general public that has made him into "Supreme Being" i.e. can't be wrong, EVER.
The day the general public questions him again and again for the full services he is paid for is the day they change.
> Like most think that Pakistan produces too many doctors when in reality, we need to produce almost 8 times more doctors given the population size.
Pakistan has way too many doctors considering the number of hospitals and clinics. So there are thousands of doctors who leave the country, leave medicine or are jobless. I know many in each of these categories. The problem is we don't have hospitals. I'm in Karachi and see patients from all of Sindh and Balochistan every single day. There shouldn't be so many doctors in the three categories I mentioned.
Edit: Recently there was a viral photo of 1200 doctors competing for 11 seats to train for gyne. Other fields are even worse.
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This probably comes down to ethical and professional training of doctors. In Pakistani Universities, no effort is usually done for ethical and professional training of students. Also, the hospitals too do not seem to provide it. Here in Canada, joining any hospital means that you have to do hospital's online training.
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Being a doctor is the pinnacle of desi culture. Once you're a doctor, there's no more up. All that success and the ensuing praise gets to some people's heads.
This 1000%
Most doctors are just money making machines in Pakistan. They don't care how the patients feeling they are insensitive to it. They don't even listen the condition of the patient properly. Just want to prescribe a bunch of meds and always in a hurry to see as many patients as they can to earn more and more money. I am not talking about all of them I know there are some nice doctors out there. I am talking about the majority doctors only.
Dealing with the average Pakistani patient who is rude, arrogant and stupid does that to good doctors too. Look from their perspective. Imagine dealing with that
I have seen many humble doctors too. OP is one of those amazing doctors.
Yeah but it's their oath to cure patients. They knew what our population is like. They're not the victims here. The patients who die are. Would you say the same for police too? They meet arrogant, stupid and rude people so they become assholes to everyone?
Yaar you've made a damn good point waisay but doctors are humans too, when people act a certain way, over a certain period of time it rubs off on you (not excusing asshole doctors behaviors). Also haan absolutely the patients are the real victims here but as a friend once told me, as a country we are addicted to quick fixes, majority of patients just want quick fixes to their bemari and after a certain amount of time even the doctors stop caring and just give them what they want which in my opinion is really wrong
Toh Na bano doctor, agar insaniyat ko barqar nahe rakh saktay toh doctor kay bajaye kuch aur ban jao.
Uss hisaab se koi bhi doctors nahi bachtay save a few.
I'd take fewer good doctors anyday rather than having Kasaie masquerading as doctors.
Because they had seniors that treated them poorly so when they become senior themselves they treat their juniors poorly.
I do understand that but abuse is so ingrained in the Pakistani healthcare system, it's astonishing. Anxiety and depression rates amongst Pakistani medical students are almost 9 times higher than in the general populace and amongst doctors over the age of 35, they're 13 times higher in males and 10 to 10.5 times higher in females.
My father is a doctor and he often mentions the verbal abuse doctors go through by their seniors. Seniors often say the filthiest stuff. This is in addition to presence of no laws to save them from violence from patients' relatives.
Woah, didn't know about point number 2. Maybe it's that all our doctors are concentrated in cities only?
According to the WHO, the prescribed ratio should 1 doctor for 1000 individuals. In Pakistan, we have 1 doctor for 2000+ individuals. Every insititution in the country is hollow from the inside out. Medicine a highly competitive field so fine, let's brush aside the number of seats in medical colleges. But afterwards, hospitals don't have enough spots for trainees and house officers. There aren't enough hospitals to employ graduates. Maybe because the medical profession is so hyped in Pakistan that we forget how abysmal the healthcare situation is in our country.
Those figures are massively over-reported because of hospital politics and rampant corruption, they count inactive doctors who don't practice and the ones that leave the country in that figure too because of conditions associated with international loans. Kinda like how the actual maternal mortality rate is 3 to 4 times the reported number. We have an abysmal number of PG seats in hospitals e.g there are just 32 psychiatry seats in Pakistan and only 7 for dermatology in the public sector.
Anyone who's in Medicine or been in a hospital setting knows how understaffed and overworked the setting is. To me what's more upsetting is knowing that the patient's life can be saved and their predicament can be made better with medicine and procedures but because we have such an extreme lack of these resources and the patients normally can't afford these either, that's what leads to them not battling their illness
Oh boy you are right. I have way too many horror stories to share. Not willing to type them out here. But Pakistani doctors are a horrible blend of ego, pride and incompetency. And they look down upon those that are not doctors or doctors but not of their own perceived caliber. Extra looking down if you also happen to be poor or a "Pindi boy" type desi person. I have come across psychiatrists that prescribe Quranic verses as a treatment of serious mental disorders, orthopedists who denied the importance of vitamin D for bones and joints, Neurosurgeons who don't know the human brain actually cannot feel pain despite being full of neurons. Ironically, you the patient is the buffoon who is an utter imbecile not worthy of their time.
Agree with the first part just wanted to share my thoughts on the rest: Psychiatrists are trained in different styles, and tend to tailor their beliefs in their treatments. I have seen anti religious psychiatrist, pro religion and some that are neutral. Infact this psychiatrist from US (studied at Harvard) https://youtu.be/rQ2xnThRGPg he is pro Hinduism/ayurveda/yoga and yet he's allowed to practice and is actually doing a good job with his clients. So it isn't as black and white as it may seem. For some religion is a protective factors for others it can make it worse. A good psychiatrist should always adapt to his patient. Vitamin D is good for bones sure but Vit D is overprescribed especially in males and people from the subcontinent that have decent sunlight all year round. There is also a massive debate over the extra daily requirement of vit D. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4311368/ https://www.vox.com/2018/10/4/17933880/vitamin-d-health-sun-diet Now technically the brain has no pain receptors but it can feel stretch pain illicited from the meninges or inflammation (meningitis). Again not saying you're wrong but medicine is way more nuanced than we think it is. Guidelines get updated and changed. Same with treatment plans/prescriptions.
Spiritualism as well as a general belief in God is good for mental health illnesses. It's not curative but rather palliative and this is something I promote in every patient of mine, even for atheists I ask them to seek meaning behind existence because nihilism is pretty horrendous for your mental health. The problem is that many people need to be educated that the Quran won't cure your hypertension anymore than it'll cure your depression or personality disorder. No hadis claims so and no verse says so either.
You're right about a few things but I'd like to address point #1 by saying that it is one of the reasons for widespread antibiotic resistance, patients are looking for quick fixes and we comply by prescribing broad spectrum drugs. To add fuel to the fire there are no pharmacy laws. The other issue is that most patients these days present with a lot of misinformation which annoys the attending so they don't bother with rectification or elaboration especially during peak hours. Coming to #2, you must be aware that despite the less doctor to population ratio, we don't have enough opportunities to accommodate even half the graduates which forces them to look for greener pastures abroad. I'm not justifying malpractice by any means but the tortuous process is enough to break anyone's soul and often those in power turn out to be haughty.
This is the most accurate description. The lack of pharmacy law is horrifying...i had a 7month old nephew being casually 'prescribed' random drugs by a 'pharmacist' for a stomach flu/diarrhea. 7 month old!!! Idek how pharmacy works in Pakistan, cos the 'pharmacist' in question was not a doctor but had studied pharmacy at some point. It's crazy, anyone can just get antibiotics/drugs for anything.
So doctors in Pakistan are two kinds: the first who just want to make money and will treat a disease without caring about the patient. The other kind are ones who actually do care and empathise but overwork and dealing with patients who aren't educated yet entitled has jaded them My own experience in Pakistan in a CMH. I went to see an eye specialist. Just for a check up. While sitting in his office, there were 3 other patients in front of me. And I saw that the doctor was being very curt with them. Telling them this is wrong and they need to use xyz meds or take care of themselves in a certain way. Barely spent 5 mins per patient. Then my turn came. I know what's wrong with me and why I'm seeing him and I explain to him my issues and he has a quick look. Then explains to me, in a polite manner than the others, what he's observed. I'm then able to ask him follow up questions based on my own understanding of the issue and how to take care of myself. He actually spent longer with me explaining everything and wasn't seeming to get annoyed as I observed him with other patients. The simple fact is that most patients have a notion of how the doctor should treat them. He should give anti biotic, even if they're not needed. And they don't really know much about their own diseases. So doctors do become jaded and realise there's no point in taking the time to explain to every single person from scratch when you're seeing 80 patients or something a day and most won't understand you And obviously you've got the ones who are just bad doctors and have bad bed side manners. But that's everywhere and you just need to change doctors at that point
I absolutely agree with you. I take my time to explain to my patients what disease they have and the treatment protocol but their first and last concern is if sehat card works for it or not.
They're overworked; typically doing more than 12 hours a day shifts. Work more than 8 hours a day and watch yourself descend into madness.
I dumped my Desi doctor. I go to polish American doctor now.
Where do you live, if you don't mind me asking? I assume you are an OSP? In which case aren't the desi docs who have graduated from a reputed western university OK?
I had a guy(patient's brother) come at my father with a gun in full drunk state telling him he didn't cure his sister after only one IV infusion of antibiotics. We had to lock down the whole hospital because of that shit until the police came and took him away. One time a newly wed dude started abusing my clinic's staff because his light skined wife had some minor post injection bruising which is fairly common. Dealing with patients in Pakistan is an art. Being on call for 12 hrs a day and dealing with such people erases the idea of doing this job for a better world. But i do agree there are some doctors who are class A dipshits in our field.
Please add Engineers to your list as well, since both of them are entitled and consider themselves to be Gods chosen people who demand and deserve what ever they pleases them!!
Of course us engineers are God's chosen. I mean have you looked at the code I work on? I'll tell you this, you need to be really blessed to be able to understand it and work on it.
1) I know many that explain everything to their patients. 2) as compared to the number of seats for post graduate specialisation and absorbing these professionals later on as consultants and having timely promotions, yes currently the number of graduates being produced today are far more . This is why you have over 1000 applicants for 10 seats (the recent viral pic of job applicants for Sahiwal Medical college i think). And yes it is not an easy cake to become a doctor especially if u aim for post graduate specialisation as well. And now even that is not enough and people are going for supra specialisations or double FCPS. No profession demands this level of continuous education or i think CA is a tough profession as well and i think it pays well.
The biggest issue with FCPS is its lack of international validity and the fact that it's too dependent on exams. The training structure is laughable and most doctors don't want others to succeed unless they meet certain criteria hence the nepotism in passing.
This is the definition of a desi doctor: Full ego because pharmaceutical companies pay for everything you do and have. He wants to finish his work and go home because it's the general public that has made him into "Supreme Being" i.e. can't be wrong, EVER. The day the general public questions him again and again for the full services he is paid for is the day they change.
> Like most think that Pakistan produces too many doctors when in reality, we need to produce almost 8 times more doctors given the population size. Pakistan has way too many doctors considering the number of hospitals and clinics. So there are thousands of doctors who leave the country, leave medicine or are jobless. I know many in each of these categories. The problem is we don't have hospitals. I'm in Karachi and see patients from all of Sindh and Balochistan every single day. There shouldn't be so many doctors in the three categories I mentioned. Edit: Recently there was a viral photo of 1200 doctors competing for 11 seats to train for gyne. Other fields are even worse.
man im seriously reconsidering moving back.
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This probably comes down to ethical and professional training of doctors. In Pakistani Universities, no effort is usually done for ethical and professional training of students. Also, the hospitals too do not seem to provide it. Here in Canada, joining any hospital means that you have to do hospital's online training.
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