Know Your Doctor - KYD

Know Your Doctor

Either you, yourself as a patient might have visited doctors or you might have taken your loved ones to a doctor. Have you ever watched a team of doctors working in a Hospital? There are junior and senior doctors in big hospitals but private practitioners attend all the patients themselves and refer to hospitals if they feel they can not manage the patient. Even the doctors jot down the history of the patient like known allergies, immediate symptoms and investigation reports if any. The patient's history is then discussed by the Junior Doctors with their seniors to diagnose the suspected problem and further clinical investigations are undertaken to pinpoint the diagnosis so that the line of action of treatment is directed toward the established and finally diagnosed disease. This process from the treating doctor's point of view is basically to "Know Your Patient". No doctor can rather no qualified doctor will be able to treat any patient without going through the process of "Know Your Patient".

But as a patient, have you ever bothered to "Know Your Doctor". I think your doctor is as much stranger for you as you are stranger to your doctor as a patient. Though the relationship between the Doctor and a Patient is a relationship of Trust and Faith, yet the different doctors may differ in their opinion. One doctor may recommend surgery while another may not recommend surgery and at this moment the patient gets confused what to do? There may be few greedy doctors, who might think of extracting more and more money from the patients and there are a majority of honest doctors, who have taken to the noble profession just to serve the mankind. But how to isolate such greedy doctors and another category of incompetent doctors, who have somehow managed to qualify as a doctor. Government and public, in general, can collectively make it possible to isolate such doctors.

Responsibility of Government

Governments provide reservations to less talented candidates not only to take admission in professional courses but through reservations, the governments are instrumental in providing employment to such professional by relaxing eligibility criteria for admission and employment in an era when "Survival of the Fittest" is the latest theory of subsistence. The government needs to make it compulsory, in this internet era with more and more information available on the net, for the doctors, hospitals and Medical Council of India:

• Display the Original Degree at a prominent place in private clinics, nursing homes, hospitals with Registration Number with MCI searchable on the net to know the qualifications, marks obtained in MBBS, MD and thereafter. The marks obtained in the primary qualifying examination entitling an individual to be called a Doctor be displayed without going into the details of relaxations taken while getting admission to professional degree courses. ( Similarly as a candidate with more than 80% marks is MCA, BTech - but having obtained less than 60% in matriculation or 50% in graduation is not eligible for certain Government Jobs except under reserved quota). The public has the right to know information about his or her Doctor as he or she is allowing the particular doctor to treat him or her. This will prevent information to be sought by "Right to Information" activists in future - which results in eroding faith in the noble profession of doctors. Self-declaration of Academic Credentials including Marks Sheet will strengthen the faith of the patients and the doctors sitting in private clinics, charging heavy consultation fee will rather feel privileged for giving them an opportunity by their patients to treat them. 
• Medical Council of India should make available the complete profile of the doctors registered throughout India to keep the Quacks away from the public.
• There should be an online patient review system for all doctors having their own clinic, employed in Private and Government Hospitals. Reviews from patients, only with verifiable Patient ID system or providing scanned documentary proof, be accepted by the MCI and if there is more than 50% the MCI must send a caution notice to such doctors. The review process should be supplemented by an online test of knowledge every five years.
• Existing Code of ethics by Medical Council of India.