This morning’s rotation at K.B. Bhabha Hospital was the greatest trial by fire so far. After meeting with the directors of the hospital, we were escorted to the outpatient department where doctors were attending to the general public with their complaints. Clinics in India are an amazing thing. The average time that the doctors spend with any one patient is around five minutes. A line forms from the doctor’s desk of huddled bodies and extends out of the room. In other institutions the patients enter the room at the sound of a buzzer used by the doctor to signify that the previous patient is done. More often than not the doctor buzzes in the next patient before the first is finished asking questions, resulting in a traffic jam as patients enter and exit with their families all clamoring for the doctor’s attention. Throughout the shuffling noise, with a stethoscope to his ears, the doctor listens for tiny variations in heartbeat or respiration.
I have become accustomed to this scene since all clinics here are some variation of this ordered chaos, but until now I’ve been playing the part of silent observer. This time the doctor asks me to take patient’s signs and histories so that he can attend one group while I do the prep work for the next group. It sounds easy enough until you start doing it. I would pass along the histories to the doctor where he would then ask me for information that I didn’t think to ask the patient. Taking blood pressure is simple and writing down complaints is too, the difficulty lies in what line of questioning to take and becoming comfortable in what you’re doing. To make matters worse, the patients that go to this hospital are predominantly from the lower socioeconomic class and speak Marathi. The last couple of weeks I’ve only been practicing Hindi. At closing time the doctor told me I did okay, which calmed me down but those few hours were tense.