Let doctors live with dignity Zhang Rongya, columnist for the Financial Times Chinese website Tian Wenping, orthopedic department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Baotou Medical College One night after 10 o’clock, I finished my surgery and went to see my patients as usual. It is my habit that no matter how late I get out of surgery, I have to see my own patients before going home, so as to feel at ease. An old patient was surprised to see me: “Dr. Zhang, I see you go to work every day at 7:00 a.m., and you haven’t left this late, and you didn’t take a break today even though you were on duty last night. Although I was tired from working all day, I was touched to meet such a considerate patient, so I was in a good mood! As I examined her wound, I jokingly asked her, “How much do you think is appropriate to bill me?” The patient thought seriously, “How about ten thousand or eight thousand?” “Then I really wish you would come and give us a leadership and salary!” The patient was surprised when he found out all my monthly income: “Only this much? I, and everyone around me, always thought you doctors earned a lot of money!” This patient has been very cooperative since then, because after that late-night conversation, she understood our doctors better. Three months later, she came to visit me in the ward when she returned from surgery and said to me, “In the past, when I was in the outpatient clinic, I always felt that I had to wait in line for half a day, but you only saw me for a few minutes. Now I can really understand you guys. You are really hardworking, you leave early and come home late, there are no weekends and holidays, and you often stay up late on night shifts. You have a lot of patients, the outpatient clinic, a lot of people, each person to see a few minutes are too busy, and then a good temper can not carry ah! In the past, when I went to the hospital, I always felt that your doctors’ expressions were unbearable, as if they owed you something, but now I understand that it is indeed the state that owes you money. ……” What more can a man ask for when he has this patient? When you hear such words, all your tiredness or aggravation is gone. Sometimes we encounter patients who do not understand us, often patients who are being treated for the first time. Patients who are discharged from the hospital or old outpatients tend to understand us more and more. One patient once said to me, “You wrote so much for me today, and it took me more than half an hour to see you, but the registration fee was only 5 yuan! The parking fee here is more than 10 yuan an hour!” In recent times, the issue of medical care and the income of doctors has attracted a lot of attention. Not long ago, there was an episode of “Xiao Cui Says Things” in which doctors and nurses from the emergency department of the Union Hospital participated in a panel discussion. Xiao Cui asked, “Is it because your income is particularly high if you don’t receive red packets? A doctor lamented: “Income is really not much, seven years of work in the Union, can not afford to buy a house, buy a car still have to lottery, no car no house is also quite depressing ……” In fact, I am also quite depressed. When I first found out that I was pregnant with Doudou, I was hesitant and uncertain, thinking that I did not have the financial strength and material basis to have a baby, so I blamed myself for a long time. After giving birth to Doudou, a good friend who no longer practices medicine had to give Doudou a lot of things. I repeatedly pushed, she said: “Others think that doctors have high income, I have a friend who asked me, doctors at the Concordia that income must be so much that the bottom of the box also collapsed, right? I can only laugh bitterly. Only when you’ve been in this business, you know what it’s like! Don’t be polite to me! Doctors are also human beings, they also have to live. I don’t want to be a doctor, I have no choice but to defect from you, I just want to live with dignity, I hope you can continue to insist ……” In order to “live with dignity”, my good friend gave up the profession of doctor, but unfortunately the MD degree and Long medical professional training. More and more of my doctoral students or hospital colleagues are leaving the medical profession. Not only is there a serious loss of doctors, but there are also many medical schools that are unable to recruit students. Before last year’s college entrance exam, someone publicly admonished candidates, “This is the college entrance exam, and the only thing I tell students is: have dignity, don’t study medicine!” Xiamen University has recently issued an announcement, declaring that “all new medical students in 2012 will be exempted from tuition fees” in the hope that this will restore the plight of the declining medical student population. “Live with dignity” for doctors has actually become a luxury! Premier Wen Jiabao once said, “To make people’s lives happier and more dignified.” Doctors are also people and need to live with dignity! To live with dignity, doctors first need to raise their income. It is unrealistic to “want the horses to run and not eat grass.” Everyone has to live, to retire, to raise a child, to buy a house, to buy a car, to live a good life, these are all human feelings. Doctors do not live in a vacuum and have families to look after. Cui also said in that episode, “Among equal thresholds, doctors have the lowest income; among equal incomes, doctors have the highest threshold.” Indeed! In China, doctors are a low-income, high-risk, high-stress, high-intensity profession with a clear mismatch between their pay and their income! Eighty percent of my peers are adamant that the next generation not be allowed to become doctors. In recent years, the entrance exams for medical schools have been getting lower and lower, and the consequence of this is that there are no good people to become doctors, and it is the people who suffer in the end! Only by raising the income of doctors and enhancing their sense of dignity can we reduce the loss of doctors and attract more talented people to enter the profession, so as to better maintain health and preserve life. Doctors need more spiritual respect to live with dignity. There is a loss of doctors, not because of less money, but because of tired hearts! The doctor-patient relationship in China is so tense that doctors have to be wary of being sued by patients at any time, have to write the thickest medical files in the world, sign the most informed consent, and do a lot of work that is not medical. This level of patient beware and mistrust is unimaginable in other countries. For doctors to live with dignity, they also need a reasonable management system. Because of the flaws in the management system, it is difficult for medical professionals in China to be more efficient and have no security. An incident that happened in the United States is representative. When a nurse gave the wrong medication to a patient, the hospital management held the nursing department accountable afterwards, first for not increasing the staff at the right time, causing the nurse to work too much to ensure quality; then they held the human resources department accountable and learned that the nurse’s child had just turned two and was crying all night, affecting her rest at night, so they applied for 10 hours of volunteer help from the community for the nurse; finally the investigation team put the wrong drugs issued together to compare, found that the appearance and color of several commonly used drugs are similar, easy to confuse, so a letter was sent to the drug company, suggesting that the outer packaging of commonly used tablets be changed, or change the shape of the tablets, to minimize the misidentification of drugs by nurses. In China, if the wrong medication is dispensed, notification of criticism and withholding of bonuses is light, and many people face dismissal. Putting on the white coat, I am a doctor, with the mission of saving lives and seeking fulfillment, eager to be a watchman of the almond forest and a good doctor. Taking off the white coat, I am an ordinary person, raising a husband and children, pursuing the good life of ordinary people, and aspiring to live with dignity.