Article Written By: Dr. Arvind Neral, Professor & H.O.D., Department of Pathology, Pt. J.N.M. Medical College, Raipur ( C.G.)

RAIPUR: Life and death are not in our hands. Let us not take the public for a ride by claiming that we could save people from the jaws of death. This kind of self aggrandizement has now landed us in the market place with consumerism getting into this arena of doctor-patient trust, the one that kept us going from the time of God Dhanvanthari. The mutual trust is the apex of medical care. The crucial part of medicine is the coming together of two human beings, the one who is ill or imagines he/she is ill and the one in whom the former has confidence. This is necessary for the human immune system to get stimulated to heal the malady.

Surprisingly only few people seem to worry about the technical competence of doctors. What they worry about is their doctor's ability to understand the patient as a person and provide the right guidance. Financial, legal or managerial techniques seem powerless to ensure that this demand is met. The solution should be sought within the medical profession itself, says Michael Boland. Clearly patients expect medicine to be something more than a mere application of medical science to the human condition.

Listening to the patient is the most difficult part of a doctor's life. Learn to listen and you will succeed as a good doctor. Listening is the first and foremost part of the whole gamut of doctor-patient relationship. Listening requires time and people want their doctor's time. Healing is an art and the healer must master his technique just as a painter does. A good doctor should master the art of healing never becoming so lost in the western obsession with objectivity and its emphasis on reproducibility and experimentation. Empirical wisdom could help a good doctor the same extent, if not more, than the so called evidence-based medicine. There are several problems with the evidence of the evidence-based medicine. Many times the modern medicine becomes evidence burdened instead of evidence based. The art of healing is not being taught in medical schools in most countries. The pity is that even in the Indian schools of medicine, we seem to have forgotten this important part of education of a doctor.

We teach medical students to listen, palpate, auscultate, and scan, but forget to teach them the most important ingredient of human affairs: to feel pain, disability, and suffering of another human being. In short, to have an insight into another's sorrow. Unless a doctor leans to feel others pain, he/she would never understand what it is to suffer from pain and how important it is for him/her to ease the other person's pain! Learning to feel others pain is the main part of a doctor's education. Henry David Thoreau wrote, "To affect the quality of the day that is the highest of arts." Medicine has the capacity to affect the rest of our lives. To be a good doctor is the greatest opportunity in life as it is the only way one gets exposed to human emotions in their pristine glory and virginity.

One of the essential qualities of the clinician is interest in humanity, for the secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patients, says Francis Weld Peabody. Doctors need two special qualities of the head and heart that make them placebo doctors and therefore good healers: 1. Imperturbability: Under no circumstances of peace or war you should get perturbed while dealing with patients. Your body language, even a frown, could kill an anxious patient. 2. Aequanimitas: Keep your mental cool under all trying situations, come what may. It needs a cool mind to rationally think in an emergency situation. A good doctor could be compared "to the promontory on the sea, against  which, though the waves beat continually, yet it both stands, and about it are those swelling waves stilled and quieted," as enunciated by Marcus Aurelius.

Money is not the criterion to judge you as a good doctor. Never try and make money in the sick room. You will get your due and, a fair share at that. Do not be in a hurry to make it big fast: no one has taken money with him/her while going at the end of life! The gratitude and the smile on the face of a grateful patient are priceless and give you true happiness. One must strive to earn such smiles in abundance. Some of you will fail in life, but never lose heart. It is in losing that you win. "From our desolation only does the better life begin," advised Sir William Osler. If you can treat triumph and disaster, the two imposters, just the same, you will come on top was Rudyard Kipling's advice in his beautiful poem "If".

One could practice allopathy, homeopathy, or any other pathy successfully, if only one could combine that with sympathy and empathy in good measure. Health care would be possible for the poor masses if we teach our students the significance of taking the best from all the complementary systems, in a judicious mix, keeping the touchstone of scientific methods at the centre of our choice.