Woes of Working in a Government Hospital

Today, I completed one year of residency in a Govt. setup, unfortunately.I should have been celebrating but thought first to put things I have learnt in this period into words. It has been a kind of eye opener into the real world of health care in India. What I`m going to write is nothing new, people who are working in similar environment will be very well aware of these. This may be helpful for friends, juniors who are gonna start their specialty career in a Govt. hospital and people associated with healthcare. Sad but true facts of a Govt. setup are :-

1. You can not get your work done effectively in any way possible. Requesting with folded hands or shouting your larynx out, nothing will work. You just have to do it yourself.
2. Government does not care about poor people.They pretend they do. Opening free hospitals, starting new schemes, free medicine shops is not the only answer. There is no system in place to monitor and evaluate their functioning. No wonder in spite of so many programs, India still lags behind in all the health indices.
3. Many health professionals have forgotten that their small decisions affect people`s lives in a big way. They fill them with their greed, arrogance and ego. Hippocratic oath has been reduced just to a Greek fable. I shall hope and try not to become one of them
4. Somehow people have managed to turn the simple business of treating the sick, saving lives into a complex process with lots of loopholes.
5. One last thing, you do not have any right to expect things to change, to complain about the system if you don`t hold an authoritative position. It will all be useless.

The list can go on but I will stop here. I don`t want to sound like a wife whining about her husband.

    I will end with a positive note. Yes, the conditions are bad but could have been worse. We can hope that things will change in future for better. We as upcoming generation of specialists, administrators can strive to work for the cause. Hope, after all that is the only thing under our control.