A Doctor is Always Late

Vyom Aggarwal

doi:10.7869/tg.647

In Indian crime thrillers, the police always comes at the end and in Indian functions, doctors get this rare honor. Unlike lawyers, who are almost always struck in some other court when the client’s case comes up before the bench, doctors have usually reached the hospital before the patient is shifted to the OT or may be even arrived for admission. However, seldom does a doctor reach a marriage or a reception, when snacks are still being served and meals are still being prepared. “Welcome, Dr. Sahib, so glad that you could take time out of your busy schedule to bless the bride and the groom. Please have your dinner first as the caterer has just started winding it off.” This appreciation for the doctor’s hard work or the sarcasm for being too late (as usual) is encountered by each of us, a far too often. Our reluctance to accept invites for night time get together, keeping ourselves away from kitty parties and humbly refusing to accept free passes for religious or cultural fests are often misinterpreted as arrogance or money lust. People can’t imagine why we can never be on time when the other professionals and businessmen making much more money than us, could. The reason that I can make out is that our most busy working hours are the ones which are meant for relaxation or socialization for others. After working from 10 to 5 in office or 11 to 7 in their shops, having had dinner by 8 pm, it is the time for them to visit the doctor for that bad headache which had been troubling since last week or vaccination of the baby which had been overdue since last month. Without putting signboard of 24x7, doctors are expected to be at clinic/hospital to attend them when they are free and also not overstay in clinic for seeing other patients, when invited by them. It goes without saying that everything which compels a person to visit a doctor after his tiresome day’s work, must be an emergency, else the problem would have resolved itself or by home remedies in the preceding several days of wait.

It is a popular saying that problems arise when you expect them the least, similarly the patients arrive when you actually don’t want them to come. Whenever you have to attend any night time function, you have only one of the two options i.e. either to keep a full session off or face the embarrassing stare of the host for arriving at the end. A patient arriving at the last minute, a patient requesting to stay put as he is already on the way, a person with chronic illness visiting for hundredth opinion with bulky unorganized file at the eleventh hour, are the common etiological agents for delaying you despite yourself having given restricted appointments. If somehow you are (un)fortunate to get lesser patients in the session and also manage to reach early, the remark “what happened doc, no patients today? Is it a lean season for you too?” is perhaps going to be heard from every other attendee.

Such common is the scenario of doctors arriving late, that the host himself qualifies his complaint of your arriving late by saying-“must have been some emergency which delayed you (as ever). Doctors are like God, they cannot leave their patients”. This casual remark often strikes like an arrow in the heart, but since only normal humans are supposed to keep emotions or react to sarcasm, so it never ricochets from a doctor’s heart. Even if you get delayed because your spouse took extra time in grooming, only explanation which is expected and also understood is that clinic was a bit heavy. Rest all explanations are considered to be lame excuses to hide the over indulgence in the money minting factory i.e. the clinic. It is not that doctors don’t plan for attending the function, after all the designer gift envelope with best compliments printed on it, for marking their attendance officially at the function, has to be arranged in the day time. If that is forgotten, the search for an open stationary shop selling the same or fishing out old unmarked but crushed envelope from the cupboard and ironing it, to bring it in presentable form, is itself sufficient to make him further late by an hour.

Most round table meetings are purposely kept after 9 pm rather than evening hours, for the reasons as stated above. The choice of speaker is dictated not by his/her expertise but the clinic timings. The most learned person with the busiest practice and longest clinic hours is the guest of honor but seldom the first choice as a speaker. Here also, if a habitual late comer (most busy of all contemporaries) arrives before the session ends, it is considered as a sign of lean season for practice, rather than the intention of the person to actually gain something from the discussion. However, the same person is often the last person to leave the meeting, as his expected time to reach home is itself at a higher threshold.

The Sunday encounter with some patient in a multiplex lobby, before the film starts, usually evokes the same remark, irrespective of age, sex or acquaintance: “Sir, how could you find time for the family today? How could your patients leave you free on Sundays? Enjoy Sir; you must have come out with family after a long time.” So to avoid the embarrassment of repeatedly being called as “Doctor sahib” in loud tone, at a public place, being made to appear as a persona non grata at the cinema theater, doctors have no choice but to voluntary reach late even for the show.

Such is the reputation of doctors amongst own peers that even medical conferences have award for early bird delegates. I often think about the embarrassment, the first speaker would have been facing had this genius idea of luring the doctors to arrive in time, by organizers wouldn’t have evolved.

I sincerely wish that unlike police, doctors never reach the clinic/hospital, after their presence is no longer necessary. I also do even more sincerely wish that more and more medical graduates get married while pursuing studies else reaching late for own marriage may not be pardoned by the priest in an hour and the spouse even in a life time!