“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it …
Written by
SP Kalantri
Physicians meet- only to part
Reminiscences- this weekend was filled with them. On December 19- thirty years since the first resident obtained her MD Medicine from the institute -a third of the hundred residents from the department of medicine gathered in Sevagram. Beginning 1979, exactly hundred residents had completed their MD training in the Medicine department, a number that aroused …
Medicine is Skin Deep
Sunday morning. I was rounding leisurely with my residents. We moved as a group to the patient’s bedside in our ICU and saw several patients: a middle-aged woman with acute myocardial infarction, a boy heavily parasitized with plasmodium falciparum and a young man fighting a dual attack of HIV and TB. We looked at their …
Violence in hospitals
Last week, a 50 year old previously healthy man died in our hospital following a massive stroke. The computed tomography scan showed that he had bled deep within his brain, the blood not letting the brain perform its functions. Death, especially sudden, evokes a medley of emotions- shock, denial, accusation, frustration, anger and grief. Not …
A tale of two consultations
A couple of days ago, I happened to see my friend’s grandchild. The three-month old baby, the child’s mother noted, had slow wandering eye movements and did not seem to focus well. The child had albinism- a disorder that affects colour of hair, skin and eyes. The mother was getting jittery. Will my son be …
Are India’s best hospitals India’s best?
On 15 November 2009, The Week released its annual list of the country’s best hospitals, ranked by various specialties like cardiology, oncology, orthopedics, gastroenterology, ophthalmology and paediatrics. The ranks are based on 14-city survey conducted by The Week in collaboration with IMRB, the market research agency, among 10 specialists across 10 specializations and 1190 general …
Mammograms – much ado about nothing?
A day before, I wrote that we should not sell mammography as a screening modality in resource limited setting. Today’s Annals of Internal Medicine carries recommendation of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) on screening for breast cancer in general population. Interestingly, USPSTF in 2002 had advocated for routine screening mammography at age 40; …
Mammography in a rural teaching hospital
A year before, our hospital acquired a mammography unit, aimed at early detection of breast cancer in women. We did so at the behest of Medical Council of India (MCI) – provision of mammography is one of the several prerequisites for granting approval for MD (Radiodiagnosis) post-graduation programme. Eager to win MCI approval, we spent …
Not even ‘till death do we part
Taori sir and bhabhi. Forty years back, an arranged marriage brought you together. Sir, you joined the department of Biochemistry in a medical school that was beginning to take roots in Sevagram. Bhabhi chose to be a homemaker. Your children went to the same medical school where you served as a faculty for three decades …
Medical Representatives and Doctors
Smart ties, black bags and glib tongues. It has been more than four years since Kasturba hospital saw medical representatives on campus. We took this measure to counter the growing perception that interaction between doctors and medical sales representatives was harming our patients’ economic health. Not an easy decision. Some doctors clearly felt uncomfortable. “Medical …