In recent years, the profession of doctors has lost its former glory, the public has criticized the medical profession, the image of doctors has been declining, and the conflict between doctors and patients has been intensifying. Chinese doctors have become the target of public criticism, but how much do you know about the pain that Chinese doctors face in terms of their profession, life, helplessness and misunderstanding? Do you know these pains?
I. The professional pain of Chinese doctors
Medicine is a relatively rapidly developing discipline, and every day new theories and new achievements appear and new technologies are born. To be a good doctor, in addition to completing one’s own work, one must persistently study to understand and master the progress and trends of the specialty so as to be at the forefront of the profession. This is especially true for discipline leaders, otherwise they will be left behind. Therefore, lifelong learning is the basic skill of every qualified doctor.
The work of doctors is busy, hard and stressful, where does the time for learning come from? Simply, the time is outside of work, that is, with the time they should rest. Thus, most doctors have little time for play, entertainment, and leisure outside of work, and even for the very fashionable fitness activities nowadays, they sigh in disbelief, although they know how important fitness is to them. They even spend their time communicating with their families, studying late into the night. If a patient is in a special situation, they are on call.
When you choose the profession of medicine, you choose dedication!
But doctors are human beings, not saints, they are like other ordinary people, need to support the elderly, need to raise children, need to worry about the house and car, also need to have time to rest, the difference is that due to the characteristics of the profession requires, they can only pay more than others. However, the income of Chinese doctors is not equal to their contribution.
The pain of life of Chinese doctors
Medicine is a discipline that explores the unknown. Although the research and study of medicine have been fruitful, the unknown of medicine and life is far more than the known so far, so there is a long way to go for the exploration of life and medicine. Because of the many unknowns, we are still at a loss as to what to do about many diseases. As a doctor, when you see your patients suffering from disease and unable to do anything about it, when a life is dying because of disease, when you see the desperate eyes of patients who are longing for life, what kind of feeling do you have? You may think you are ashamed of the title of doctor, ashamed of the patient, ashamed of life, you may be ashamed of yourself, you may think you are the most useless person in the world.
Doctors are working and living in such an environment, they have seen too much. Some people say that doctors and nurses are numb, facing the death of life, the face of the patient’s family members howling, grief, doctors and nurses are expressionless, cold as ice. Yes, in many cases this is the case, because they have experienced too much, they can and the families of the same lament?
Their inner feelings only they know, they are controlling and repressing themselves. This suppressed mood is simply a torture and torment to the mind is a major enemy of physical health, sometimes, only at the right time and occasion, they can be released.
Third, the pain of helplessness of Chinese doctors
The Chinese people are suffering, especially the peasants. They live at the bottom of society, and in many places, they depend on the sky for their livelihood. Once they get sick, they are even worse off, and there are many people who suffer from poverty and return to poverty due to illness.
As a doctor, saving lives and helping the injured is their vocation. If we say that the disease is incurable and give up medical treatment, it is still justifiable, but there are many patients who give up treatment for financial reasons and continue to be tortured by the disease or wait for the death. What is it like to be a doctor? Who can understand this feeling? Doctors feel a deep sense of helplessness when patients have to go home and wait for death because their families are poor and have little money.
Doctors hope that every patient can receive the best treatment, that every life can live with dignity, that all patients receive equal medical treatment and care, and that they will not be divided into three, six, nine, and differently treated because of their status, power, money, and so on. But these are just beautiful visions. When faced with the reality that doctors are helpless in the face of a disease that can be subdued, this is a desecration of the title of doctor or white angel, which is an eternal pain in the heart of doctors.
Fourth, the pain of misunderstanding of Chinese doctors
In recent years, due to the change in the business model of hospitals, the increase in medical costs, and the abnormal media hype, the relationship between doctors and patients has become worse and worse, and violent incidents against doctors have occurred frequently. The angels in the past have now become the object of condemnation, to the extent of “talking about doctors”. In such an environment, medical professionals are simply “notorious”.
The doctor-patient relationship should have been harmonious, because we can only work together to deal with our common enemy – disease. If there is one percent of hope for a disease, the doctor must use 100 percent of his or her efforts! In the old days, even if doctors had faults in the medical process, they were understood by patients and families, patients respected doctors, doctors loved patients, and that kind of harmonious doctor-patient relationship was touching. Harmonious doctor-patient relationship is extremely important for doctors to work actively and for patients to recover from diseases. However, now, this harmonious relationship between doctors and patients is less, mutual distrust, mutual defense, quarrels, and even the phenomenon of hands, there are medical staff were beaten, killed incidents, the patient’s family members together with professional “medical trouble” haunted the hospital, seriously affecting the normal medical order, the safety of medical staff can not be guaranteed.
These phenomena, although related to the contradictions caused by the rise in medical costs in recent years, but also with the media to play a misleading, non-good propaganda has a close relationship. Medicine has its own laws, and some errors and mistakes are unavoidable in the process of exploring it. Therefore, our media, our people, our society, should maintain a minimum of respect and tolerance for medicine, for doctors, and should understand the profession of doctors.
Building a harmonious hospital and harmonious doctor-patient relationship requires the joint efforts of the whole society and all medical staff, the effective integration of the doctor-patient relationship, and the standardization of iron discipline and system constraints. Only by vigorously strengthening the construction of the practice and medical ethics, and strengthening the quality of staff training, can we form a good operating mechanism for hospital development and create a comfortable and harmonious medical environment for patients.
In fact, from all over the world, doctors are an enviable profession, because they have both a lucrative economic income and a high social status. In foreign countries, many talented people are willing to pay high tuition fees and great efforts to study medicine, mainly because the doctor’s investment is high, but also high returns. Once a physician’s license is obtained, he or she can be clothed, fed and respected. However, in China, the aura of a doctor’s career is fading. Not only are medical schools having a hard time recruiting top students, but there is also a serious brain drain in the physician workforce. Some people even say, “If you hate someone, ask them to become a doctor.” This phenomenon is thought-provoking.
Now, not only has someone listed “nine reasons not to be a doctor,” but even more, a doctor’s child posted: “My mother said that if I become a doctor, I will break my legs!” Why are doctors reluctant to let their children study medicine? The main reasons are high investment, high risk, high pressure and relatively low income. In fact, once a person chooses to become a doctor, it often means a lifetime of dedication and sacrifice.
As the ancients said, “If you are not a good minister, you are a good doctor. In the minds of the ancients, the prime minister and the good doctor were equal in status. Now, who dares to say they are equal? The three most envied professions in America are doctors, lawyers and accountants, the latter two because of their substantial financial income and the former because of their high social status. But look at China nowadays, many people compliment health care workers as “white angels” in front of them, but turn around and become “white wolves”. Human life is at stake, the work pressure is not small, the income is not the highest, but the most cursed.
The Chinese Medical Association surveyed 6,000 doctors and 78% said they did not want their children to study medicine. When medical work has become the “chicken rib” of career choice, how can we motivate the best talents to study in medical schools? When the quality of health care workers deteriorates from generation to generation, to whom will people entrust their health?
We call on doctors and patients to give each other more understanding and trust!