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Modern medicine

The article "Rescuing modern medicine from its traps" (June 15) is thought provoking and educative. One only wishes that the high standards it talks about are achieved and maintained in our medical schools and hospitals. The article should serve as an eye-opener to practising doctors and offer guidelines to those who wish to embark upon a career in medicine. The distinction in the treatment given by Greeks to slave patients and citizen patients as cited by the author is significant.

A.S. Ratnam,
Visakhapatnam, A.P.

The article exposes the fate of Indians at the hands of doctors and hospitals. Doctors' priorities seem to have changed with community healthcare becoming the casualty. Doctors need to recognise their responsibility towards the community. It is for medical colleges to produce more citizen doctors than slave doctors.

Aman Arora,
Sonipat, Haryana

The need for modern medicine to rediscover the human touch has been rightly emphasised. Super-speciality hospitals can afford to limit the number of patients and keep the clinician working at a comfortable pace. However, this is not possible in government hospitals, charity institutions, etc. Most of them are understaffed with much absenteeism. More often, the doctor ends up seeing more patients than he can handle. This puts a heavy strain on the system and the patient is the loser. The situation worsens as we go to rural areas, which woefully lack medical infrastructure. To rediscover the human aspect, it is necessary for doctors to understand the socio-economic milieu of our country.

Jeevan Kuruvilla,
Vellore, T.N.

It is true that doctors today depend more on laboratory reports and diagnostics and do not spend much time on clinical methods. This is because they do not find the time to do clinical tests. There is a lot of competition in the medical field. Patients do not have enough patience to wait for results — even if doctors ask them to wait, they insist on undergoing tests. Added to these is the inclusion of doctors within the scope of the Consumer Protection Act.

They prefer to do all the investigations to be on the safe side of the law. The fault therefore does not lie with doctors alone; patients are equally responsible for the present state of affairs. The solution for this is restoration of the family physician concept.

K. Senthilraja,
Namakkal, T.N.

How one wishes the wonderful piece of advice had come before the 20-day medico strike we all witnessed some days ago. Doctors like Palaniswamy are the need of the hour.

Rashid Ghani Khan,
Aligarh, U.P.

Medicine should not be restricted and cold; it should consider patients as human beings. Ethics and compassion are the only things that differentiate the treatment of a patient from oiling of a worn-out machine.

It is perhaps due to the disappearance of the human touch in modern medicine that people are reverting to ancient systems such as Ayurveda and yoga.

Rhishabh Jetley,
New Delhi

In the past, dedicated doctors examined patients with a stethoscope and diagnosed the ailment. But nowadays we find super-speciality doctors who order a detailed check-up in labs, whatever the ailment.

Though there are complicated diseases that require such diagnoses, the old form of listening to patients has its relevance even today.

J.J. Vellara,
Kozhikode, Kerala

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