I guess not everyone takes the oath seriously, even though it IS a serious matter. I remember when I took it I actually started to have second thoughts about the whole medical profession thing, despite having already graduated! Nice piece =)
Not only in the Sudan, but across most underdeveloped countries, some professions are socially worshiped and epistemically misled: The Medical Practitioner is one. It is hard to trace the root causes for such syndromes, which apparently related to combination of the historical Shamanism and the present Fortunatism.. Medical Doctors are traditionally respected, for the reasons the article had described; whereas humans are mostly afraid for their lives and the consequences of illness and diseases. Also, they are relatively well paid; whereas people would pay anything to get well. Such respect and earning had elevated both social and intellectual ranks of MDs. On parallel, the system for qualifying those MDs still backdated in most cases; which would secure their benefits regardless how efficient there are.. I guess cleansing the profession from unfit trends and practices should work on both system revolutionization and professional syndication. On one hand to have qualified skillful practitioners, who master hands-on-the-trade (American style), and on the other corresponds with national structure of professions and affiliations that value everyone, including the Garbage Collectors (if any)..
I do not totaly agree with you. I am a doctor as well, and I do not want to inflict my own practices because I was blessed to have stronger passion for comforting than most of my colleagues. However, most of those I worked with fell into one of three bcategories: those who are just in it because they could (academicaly) which I think is sad, but they do the job they signed in for fairly well (they follow protocols, manuals, and their seniors and show little or no interest in the fact that the subject infront of them is a human being, a horse, or a table) ; others who do not grasp the essense of the profession and those are the most problematic because they tend to try to impose their (mostly flawed) virtues on everyone around them, and those are often the ones who complain about being oppressed and not compensated or respected enough; the third category include the few passionate and humble actual ”healers” who not only will go beyond what’s allowed, but would burden their souls with every im-possible they could not offer. However I have rarely met doctors with grandiosity issues, and I have worked in the busiest hospitals where cases such as illegal pregnancy etc are very comon. And even IF such attitude was present, I trust that it is originating from ignorance rather than grandiosity or feeling superior. I design HIV interventions and it would shock how little physicians know about precautions, protection, and patients( and their) rights. We can solve such situations by educating and advocating for stigma reduction, try to formally or informaly discuss such issues with your colleagues-and you will be surprised. Nice article, you are obviously very keen and a sensitive person yourself. Thank you.
Thx Ala’a Baraka for the insightful article, being a doctor who took my med studies in Sudan, I can say that the professors I’ve learned the most from are those who demonstrated high medical ethics hand in hand with teaching good clinical skills.
Thanks Ala’a, well written article, however it would have been more enlightening if you mentioned (anonymously) any actual and real day to day examples, so readers can relate better to the article.
