The Doctors and the change.
In a country that has a million and one acute problems (like a dengue epidemic, tanking FDI, racial unrest) the biggest public issue is SAITM.
A lot has been said about the pro’s and con’s of having a private medical education but the real issue is that the powerful GMOA Doctors Union and the IUSF is making this THE problem of the nation.
For the IUSF, apparently the issue is privatization of education.
For GMOA, its their concern for the safety of patients as these doctors are unqualified.
But one friend (a doctor) let on something a bit deeper out.
“You’ll feel the impact when being a doctor is no longer a service but a profession.” — a GMOA doctor
For me, that hit home.
Historically we being a country with limited resources and most of the populace being barely able to make ends meet, the government had to subsidize a significant part of a citizens life including healthcare, education, transport, etc.
The doctors and the good people in the healthcare system work crazy hours and provide a commitment towards the patients thats above and beyond whats the norm elsewhere. They work with heart.
And you NEED that superhuman commitment to make a leaky, broken, under-resourced system work.
They are the reason our healthcare system provides more free coverage than most better off nations with so much less resources.
However, like anything thats free, it comes with no frills/icing.
Yet now, with more people of the country moving into the middle class and upper middle class, people want the nicer bits. They want choice. Choice of choosing private healthcare and choice of where their kids will study etc. People demand nicer things from the market. Almost every industry has delivered.
And the doctors are one of the last few groups to get converted or ‘privatized’. (Yes we have private hospitals; but doctors and hospitals are different.)
When you are seeing a doctor in Sri Lanka, the general feeling that you get is that the doctor is doing you a favor and not doing a service for a fee (whether thats paid by the govt. or yourself is immaterial). Therefore the dynamics of that relationship is screwed. Long wait times, dismissive attitudes (of some), and in some occasions professional negligence.
In developed markets though the patient is a ‘customer’. The doctors provide a professional service for a fee and they are expensive. But if they screw up, they will be sued. They don’t have to stretch themselves thin as the systems they work within are better supported and they get to have a life.
This change is the major shift that not everyone can adjust to. And our healthcare system is not at a place where you can do a 9–5 style job and expect things to happen. Thus we are at cross roads and the chaos.
This will be a generation long shift, but it will have to happen. The riots, strikes and the scape goats are all part them trying to resist the change.
The sooner the doctors themselves realize the root cause as well as the inevitability of the change, I think we will get to move forward. A balance will be struck and attitudes will change.
Eventually, Hopefully.
