Ravi Ramakantan, Department of Radiology Time was when I was 30 and wanted to play God.. Time was when, I could do something …. and it had to be done. I am now 50 and every thing seems different. Not that any thing has changed at all…. the patients are the same; their diseases are the same & treatments – often- not much different from they used to be several years ago – when I was much younger and more ‘knowledgeable’. In those days, to me, the patient did not seem to matter as much as his or her disease did. If the patient had a problem, the problem had to be treated. Whether it made the patient better or worse was … well .. incidental. If an investigation could be done, it had to be done… if a diagnosis could be made, it had to be made … that it did not contribute to the patient’s well being well, again,… seemed to be incidental. In those good old eighties and nineties, I was more important than the patient. My chief used to let we youngsters do what we wanted; as long as it did not hurt the patient (too much); and when he advised us not to do something (which was, but rarely) we would silently say what a “old fool he is” and grudgingly given in. And so we did this and that and showed it in conferences and everybody dutifully said “wow’ and clapped and we felt great. Time went by, I became old and “Chief” and I now see everything differently. My first reaction to everything is “So what happens to the patient?” and my younger colleagues say: | “Who?”. Hesitantly, I say “ I mean, “the patient” and they say “ we have convinced the patient and taken informed consent and all the money required has been arranged”. What could I say? They have the references, the have the skill, they have the wherewithal and they are in their thirties. I tell myself, well; I myself once was in my thirties (though now it seems so long ago!) and I was not very different. I used to believe that this was something that occurred uniquely to me and my department; so, I discussed this with some of my colleagues some older (only a few of them are now around and some younger. They all nodded their head in unison; we have discovered a phenomenon. What is learned at age 50 is not known at age 30 and it cannot be taught. Everyone has to go through this thing called life to know what is to be known at 50. To me this seems to be an ironic twist of this thing called experience- it has to be lived to be learned – how I wish it would be ‘congenital”. But then, long ago, one of my brave young residents put up a sticker on my locker ( this sticker still adorns my locker door) –"If every one thinks like the Boss – no one thinks very much" --- how true say my residents of today! July 2002 |
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