04/09/2015
This message may be for you if you wish to create a difference. At some or the other time in life we can spare some time. Everything can't be weighed in monetary terms.
Questions begging an Answer:
1. Have we done enough to make a difference in the lives of others?
2. Should we continue to crib that people don't recognise us?
3. Should we continue to treat Khaansi-Jhukaam-Dast-Bhukhaar?
Activity: Adopt one school in the area of your practice.
Give health talks on a regular basis, preferably a short talk during school assembly.
School is a place where you don't need to ask people to come and listen to you. There is no obligation to make any arrangement from your side.
Choose a school catering to an age-group you are comfortable with. Secondary and higher secondary students tend to listen less to others. Primary, Middle school children are receptive and responsive.
Lady doctors may like to choose girls school, if they prefer.
A school management may not entertain you. You can work through your contacts. Once you develop rapport and show results you may be the most welcomed person.
Terms & Conditions:
Declare to the school management, that you will only give health talks. Depending on your liking you may adopt to give advice but should avoid it, you are there only to give a health talk.
Topics:
Make a list of common medical/hygiene conditions and plan your talks. You can match the topics with Inter/national Health Days. If possible design a poster. An image is worth a million words.
Confidence:
Many people don't have confidence of public speaking, there may be certain hiccups in the beginning but slowly you will be comfortable.
Your contribution:
15 minutes time for each talk+time for travelling to and fro+time for social interaction before and after the talk+out of pocket spending on fuel.
52 talks in a year means 13 hours of talktime (plus...)
What you gain: (Don't expect everything below. Nothing will happen in a day.)
1. Mental satisfaction.
2. New type of awareness about yourself and your capabilities.
3. Recognition in society.
4. May be your clientele increases, quacks are ousted.
5. School may choose you as their first referral physician.
6. As message about your ability spreads you may get a call from other schools.
What society gains:
1. A first-hand knowledge about health conditions from an expert.
2. Learning by children early in their lives. Earlier the better, benefit can be reaped for rest of the life. Can also be passed on to parents, siblings and progeny.
3. Herd Immunity (Don't go for literal meaning, only try to get the concept): When a person develops an infectious disease, it can spread in the community through contact. If a child prevents her/himself from developing a disease, there is no chance it will spread in the community. More the number of children do this, lesser are the chances that a disease will occur for it to spread. You and your children also get a protection (we get infections from others).
4. There will be higher esteem and respect for doctors.
How to make best out of it ?
1. Use IEC material. Design you own posters. Take images from internet. Take help of art teacher or students in the school.
2. You may start your talk with words like: "children say Jai Hind", do it 2-3 times. This way you will be able to prepare them mentally.
3. Repeat the important points at the end of the talk.
4. Finally at the end, you may ask students to tell all this to mummy-papa, sister-brother, dada-dadi. You may ask them: Mummy ko bataoge, Papa ko bataoge. Students usually reply by 'bataenge'.
The results depend on your dedication, commitment. You may love to continue it. If you don't like, you can drop it any day and then re-start any day.
Initially, even well-developed countries had clinics full of patients suffering from infectious diseases. With the spread of knowledge about hygiene the proportion of patients with infectious disease fell. This way it is possible that in the long run doctors will get more of other cases. This I feel can result in getting more focus on other common conditions rather than typical Khasi-Jhukaam-Dast-Bhukhaar. As the quality of patients increases, so increases our satisfaction about general practice.
So, doctors go back to school.
