Health Adda

Why delivering good gratifying medical care is so complex is because it involves not just knowledge, skills and ethics but another vital component that is often overlooked, called medical etiquette. Medical etiquette is simply good proper behaviour that is expected of physicians and nurses when dealing with patients. Simple, etiquette is usually not given much importance during medical training in this country and is hence often found woefully lacking in our professionals. Consequently, do not be surprised to meet a top-notched specialist with a string of degrees below his name, who may forget the etiquette of offering you a seat when you enter his chamber, and continue talking on the phone. A resident doctor, who comes to train with us to become a superspecialist, is often grossly deficient in etiquette. In the busy and crowded OPD, I see him often examining a female patient in the presence of 10 unrelated spectators. In the ward, I see him doing an ascitic tap (drawing fluid ...

Although one cannot imagine a hospital without nurses, their importance in the delivery of care often goes unrecognized. It is not uncommon to hear of instances when a very critical patient with little hope of survival, has been successfully operated upon by a team of highly specialized doctors, brought back to life as it were by a group of intensivists in the ICU, and then, after several weeks in hospital when hope has mounted, suddenly dies due a wrong injection or infection from a catheter due to nursing lapse. What relatives experience at such times is a deep sense of betrayal and anger, that soon replaces the gratitude and appreciation that the previous few weeks of heroic achievement had earned. And what compounds matters in busy hospitals is that nurses neither have the time nor the training to provide emotional support to grieving relatives at this stage, ensuring that they go back with permanent bitter memories and impressions of this hospital. To be fair to nurses, jus...

Ruby is  finally  set to undergo surgery for a blocked and ulcerated food-pipe that has plagued her for 12 long years. Inshallah, if all goes well, this 30 year old frail 40 kg girl might get another chance to live life with grace and vigour, when a loop of intestine replaces her gullet and allows her to eat normal food. Her problems had begun suddenly 12 years ago when she had accidentally swallowed sulphuric acid, used to clean floors and commodes that her father had kept in a clear water bottle. She still shudders to think of the intense burning, choking and pain, the swelling around her mouth and the agony of drips in hospital. A week later she had noticed difficulty in swallowing food that had progressed to obstructing even the passage of her saliva. She had withered rapidly from a 55 kg energetic girl to a skin-and-bony 20 kg in three months and had become so weak that she needed hospitalization and drips again and again. It was around then that her association with us ...

Spring is the time when allergy reaches its peak every year with sneezing, stuffy or running nose, scratchy eyes, a nagging cough or itchy skin. More severe allergic symptoms include urticaria or angry hives on the skin and breathlessness or wheezing. Global observations show that allergies are on the rise year after year; 2011 set a record and experts expect 2012 to be worse. This increase has been attributed to increased levels of carbondioxide in the atmosphere due to global warming, that feeds plants and leads to greater release of pollen in the atmosphere. The culprit is usually pollen that comes either from grass or from tress. Pollen from blooming plants are carried by the wind and brought on to our bodies where some of them trigger allergic reactions. As they enter the body through the nose and wind-pipes, they often selectively trigger reactions at these sites. While many allergy experts recommend testing to find out the exact cause like identifying species of plant pollen th...