This medico from Kerala tells you why it’s better to be a pole dancer in Las Vegas than being a doctor in India!

If you are one of those parents, who harbour the hope of seeing their ward as a doctor —and honestly, who wouldn’t want to— you shouldn’t miss what Dr. Roshan Radhakrishnan, anaesthesiologist-cum-writer from Kerala, has to say.

The medico cuts wide open— well, with the sharpness of his scissors and scalpels— nothing but the truth.

Here are 10 shocking points from his blog post titled “Why I will never allow my child to become a doctor in India” that will certainly prick your conscience:

1. The doctor-patient ratio: With 0.7 doctors per 1000 Indians, the doctor:patient ratio is far below that of other comparable countries like China (1.9), United Kingdom (2.8) and United States (2.5). Spain’s 4.9 seems like an absolute luxury in comparison, I must admit. What this means in layman’s terms is simply this – that you are always going to be swamped with patients beyond the logical human capacity in India.

2. Thou shalt sacrifice your time, parents, spouse and child-  You would never allow a taxi driver to drive you for 24 hours continuously but asking surgeons to do that every third day is fair game in India, apparently.

3. Thou shalt sacrifice thy life dream- It is a sacrifice that will take away your twenties and eat away at your thirties. You may enter the field bright-eyed at 18 but I must ask you – what happens if the dream to become a heart surgeon does not reach fruition?

4. Who cares for the doctor- A young surgeon working in one of the premier institutes in India spoke to me the other day…Walking out of her home at 7 AM and returning home at 10 PM just to fall into bed and then wake up again at 5 in the morning to restart the cycle, she wondered what was the point of it all. She was losing touch with her loved ones and had become a zombie, lost between the politics within the hospital and a total lack of social life. All this for a handsome salary of 50,000/- a month (in Mumbai) which she knew would not buy her two nights in the ICU of the very hospital she was working in.

5. Low returns: Another doctor spoke out recently on a public forum, talking of his experience of doing six years of rural service for the government. When he finally left it two years ago, the man in his thirties had less than Rs 15,000/- in his bank balance with no extravagant purchases or trips to boast off. He needed his parents help at that age to still pay for his rent. It all came to a head when the guy at the shop recharging his mobile revealed how his monthly takeaway was more than the doctor’s… without any risk whatsoever.

6. Defensive medicine- Selfless service means you do the extra hours because the hospital is perpetually understaffed.  Selfless service means you take home a call centre worker’s salary because the healing you do is a service, remember? Selfless service means you adjust with the lack of drugs and instruments available and still save people because there is no other hospital nearby.

7. You are then the monster that the public reads in the papers – the one who killed their loved one because of your greed to steal their money/harvest their organs/molest their ailing mother or child.

8. Are you willing to die for your profession?- The Indian Medical Association confirmed in May 2015 that over 75% of the doctors in India have faced some form of violence at the patient’s hands in India.  When was the last time you saw a software techie being killed off for not making an app properly? Still feel like using the ‘Selfless service’ card again?

9. ‘Selfless service’ does not require you to give up your soul and life- Understand one thing – ligating pulsating blood vessels is not a service. Restarting a heart is not a service. Suturing meticulously with threads thinner than the hair on your eyebrow is not a service. Identifying the extent of a tumour in the brain right down to the last millimeter while operating to remove it is not a service. It is an art. It is a specialized skill. It is a test of your endurance because at the end of the 25th hour of straight duty, you better save that 20th patient on your operation table or else everything you have done before this does not matter. Above all else, it is a sacrifice.

10. What I want for my child: I will let you have every choice in life and I will be there to support you and guide you along the way.  You can be a wildlife photographer trekking through the Amazons or dance the poles at Las Vegas. But I will never allow you to become a doctor in India. Because I did not raise my child for two decades just to watch her lose her sense of right and wrong, of humanity or worse, watch her die. And I don’t mean just physically.  

PS: The plight of the profession has stung the doctor-writer so much that despite not being a father yet he shot this letter to his future ward.