Indian Healthcare System

🧫 Mucormycosis: A symptom of everything that’s ailing our Healthcare System 🏨

💊 Rampant use of high doses of steroids is leading to uncontrolled blood sugar levels in many patients, suppressing their immune system, and encouraging this fungus called mucor to grow unchecked!

🤔 But is steroid overuse really the root cause?

🙈 Why should there be rampant use of high doses of steroids, with no monitoring of blood sugar levels?

🥵 Some of it may be attributable to the panicked patients and overworked doctors. However, there are deeper underlying causes why patients and doctors have been so deeply affected by this malady.

I see three causes:

Who will calm down the patients when the doctors themselves are panicking?

Dear doctors, I can try to empathise with your concern..

Let’s consider a healthy 35 year old..

10-30 out of 1000 in this age group will land up in ICU, about 1 will die.. (ballpark figures based on current situation)..

This is unprecedented for an illness that starts as an innocuous viral URTI..

There’s no way, in the initial 5 days, for me as a doctor to know whether the patient sitting in front of me will be one of those 10-30 ICU admissions..

Does that justify over treating everyone I see?

🩺 Family Practice in the Next Decade: Leading from the Front! 💪🏽

Last month I got the opportunity to address a virtual gathering of Family Physicians, and share my predictions for the coming decade!

I believe that Family Physicians will be trusted and valued much more, as we continue to provide humane, personalised care, using appropriate technology and the Art of Medicine!

*Watch the session here:* https://youtu.be/B0Vcra10ezA (25 min, English)

📝 Salient points from the Telemedicine guidelines for Family Physicians 🖱️

📜 General

A Registered Medical Practitioner is entitled to provide telemedicine consultation to patients from any part of India
The RMPs should exercise their professional judgment to decide whether a telemedicine consultation is appropriate in a given situation or an in-person consultation is needed in the interest of the patient.
The RMP shall uphold the same standard of care as in an in-person consultation but within the intrinsic limits of telemedicine.

How to Survive Internship – A Few Pointers for Our Newest Doctors!

Medical education in our country is very mindless and impractical, and this irrelevance reaches a peak during the one year of compulsory internship. In good medical colleges, internship is a grueling affair – collecting samples, chasing lab reports, completing paperwork, and worrying about not getting enough time to study for the looming PG Entrance exams!

Unfortunately, medical colleges are still very hierarchical, and the most boring and the most clerical work is given to the junior-most person on the team, who often happens to be the intern. In the US residency programs, it’s the same, except that there are 3rd and 4th year medical students who show up at 5am every day (or should I say every night?) to prepare the “rounding sheets” for the unit, and the interns have the “luxury” to show up at 6am to supervise their work!

MBBS Done, Didn’t Get PG. What Next?

Here’s Some Unsolicited Advice from a Docpreneur..

1. For a fresh MBBS graduate, the best option is to become a Family Physician and start your own clinic. The pendulum is swinging from specialists and corporate hospitals to primary care and small clinics. A lot of doctors started their practices right after MBBS, and are doing phenomenally great!

The Guru of Jugaad – What the West can learn from Indian Healthcare

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Several of my expat patients are extremely impressed with the private healthcare system of India. They have never experienced anything like it back home! They rave about the efficiency, the cost, and the availability of quality care. Where else would you find a doctor consulting you in the comfort of your home for about the same fee you gotta shell out for a clinic visit back home? They want to know how we’re able to create such a super-efficient system that rivals the developed world in quality!

Here are some of my thoughts, based on my experiences working in India and the US, and my interactions with patients and doctors from around the world.. Continue reading The Guru of Jugaad – What the West can learn from Indian Healthcare

Affordable Healthcare

Dr Devashish Saini, Founder, Ross Clinics, speaking at a Workshop on “Affordable Healthcare” organised by BRICS Chamber of Commerce and Industry. India International Centre, New Delhi. Wednesday