“Even Mr Modi leaves his phone outside,” admonished the elderly doctor as I froze in the process of lying down for my echocardiography. This was my very first interaction with him and his rudeness was a shock.
My phone had rung a couple of times since I entered the room; both times I had almost instantaneously silenced it. Which is why the first few words the doctor spoke to me had shocked me. Recovering my composure, I told him that while I had silenced the device, he did owe me minimum courtesy as a patient and his tone was unacceptable. Far from placating him, it further aggravated his irritation and he insisted that given the gravity of the first crime (the phone ringing twice) I would now need to leave the phone outside.
I had gone alone for the check-up and since hospitals as a rule do not allot lockers or such like to OPD patients, this was out of the question. But he was not in the mood to listen to logic. His demeanour was a far cry from the usual suavity of doctors at expensive private hospitals like the one in which I found myself that Saturday morning.
Not the one to step back from a fight I retorted that I would not leave my phone behind and had no reason to since the phone had not made any noise since his reprimand. I could already feel my heart racing as I made an effort to keep my temper in check while standing my ground. I wondered what impact it would have on my test.
In another era, whimsical doctors were common, their temper was even perceived to have a positive correlation with their clinical acumen. They were accorded respect as life savers, the general societal respect for erudition in an era when education levels were poorer, added to that stature. Consciousness about patients’ rights was conspicuous by its absence and the default assumption was that all doctors are working in the spirit of service.
Both Indian health care and Indian patients have moved some distance from that era. The transition was inevitable though. For one, health care has become prohibitively expensive (at 14% India’s health care inflation is the highest in the region) and in private hospitals such as the one that I had gone to, the patient, being the customer, is always right. More importantly, conversations around the communication skills of doctors have picked up in recent years. Attitude, Ethics and Communication (AETCOM) is a module now in the MBBS programme.
There are far-reaching systemic implications of a doctor that does not know how to talk to their patients. In a 2017 article in the Indian Journal of Paediatrics, Dr Meherban Singh wrote: “Rude and aggressive behaviour of the patients or their family members, and arrogant and lackadaisical approach of the doctor, adversely affects the doctor-patient relationship and the outcome of the patient.”
Some of the temper is caused by work stress – a government doctor in a Tier I city like Delhi can easily treat 200-250 patients in an OPD, numbers unheard of anywhere else in the world. In smaller towns and remote public health centres in India, the mere presence of a doctor causes gratitude. While the need for communication lessons for doctors crops up every time there is a discussion on the increasing incidences of violence against them, and there is a surfeit of medical literature available on this issue, the need for doctors to adhere to basic courtesies because patients have a right to health hardly makes it to medical journals. The first step in trust is seeing the patient as a person who is seeking a service which is paid for. The doctor is a professional like any other and needs to be aware of that.
This article is authored by Abantika Ghosh, former journalist and Healthcare Lead, Chase India New Delhi.
