Crow's Nest...

This week has been busy at the hospital. Most of the house officers have left the ward as their rotations have finished and only five of us are left. Of us five not many are inclined towards working and that leaves me and one of my fellow officers with all the work burden. I have been doing alternate day calls this week and it becomes very tough when one has to deal with all the slime and shit the trainees throw at you. Power, they say, corrupts. And this stands true for the Pakistani people more than anyone else. My senior colleagues who are hardly one or two year senior than i am sometimes start believing, by virtue of their, modest seniority that that they somehow have gained control over me and try and force orders unto me. And as we know authority of this kind irks me more than anything in this world. But even then i try and maintain a straight face just because this is the Holy moth of Ramadan and I don't want to sour the relationship. Not all of them are the same but ...

It is such an ironic and unfortunate thing that trainee doctors in Pakistan are treated in the most humiliating and degrading manner. And in turn when these doctors come out of this low level training they do the same with their younger colleagues. A trainee doctor in the federal hospital is paid a mere Rs. 10,000 in form a stipend. This amount is insufficient for anyone, let alone a doctor, who has to earn for his/her family and support them. Even a street hawker earns more than his every month. To top this all when doctors try to raise their concern about the issue they are shot down by their very own senior colleagues who are in administrative power and have by this time filled their pockets with money and are satiated. The doctors at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences let their voice out last week. All they did was stage a token protest in front of the emergency ward for 30 minutes. Lo and behold the tyrant Executive Director appears on the scene and very shamelessly tr...