First Do No Harm…
In today’s scenario, where progress is the new happiness everywhere, aggress seems to be the new harness. Off late, the angst against doctors has risen to a different level and we are witnessing it more than often. We as doctors, are given the Hippocratic oath at the very beginning of our career, where one of the important vows says, Primum non nocere…meaning above all else, first do no harm. We strive and try to give best possible treatment in available resources to a patient, who is presented to us. However, that doesn’t make us responsible for the condition that patient has been brought in. When an illness becomes serious, the reasons are multifactorial and we deal only with the real time condition, oblivious of triggers that led to it. Well, at the cost of sounding defensive, I am trying to put light on the footprints of “harm” here, which has tiptoed in our psyche silently in recent situations. The truth is, it is relatively easy to do good in this world, but it is real tough to do no harm.
The other day, a lady in her early forties came to my opd, and got diagnosed as diabetes. When I was counseling her, she was flabbergasted at the idea of omitting sugar from her diet. She said, “ how can I stop sweets at such a hay phase of my life??? My life will be so bland! “ l looked at her in dismay. She was obese, with high sugars and I was trying to figure out the best lifestyle plan for her along with medications, so that she could live a healthy life ahead. But then, she seemed to be in a non receptive zone altogether. So I asked her, what do you expect from me? She plainly said, you adjust your “medicines” accordingly, so that my sugars as well as my weight gets controlled, but I can’t do much from my side. I wondered if insulin resistance also induces insight resistance ! Yes, this is a kind of self harm. If she fails to follow the advice and lands up in a crisis, does that make me a nemesis?
Leave apart medicine, lets just talk about us, as humans. We have started taking our lives too much for granted. There is a careless and callous attitude towards everything. Be it health, wealth, emotions or even relationships. The soaring temperatures this summer, tell us that environment hasn’t been spared either. Isn’t all this a part of the holocaust ? To add to it, our tolerance to adversities has weakened too. In walks of life, all falter, judgements go wrong, we fail, there are heartbreaks, and then there are heart attacks too ! But then, we conveniently averse from owning the whole crisis up. Why ?? Because we are so overwhelmed by the judgements that are passed, opinions that are expressed and the comments that are conveyed that accepting flawed selves has become burdensome. If our shortcomings are exposed, we turn our back to them furiously. What happens next ? We shirk the responsibility, and blame the situation or the person involved. We just want to feel guilt free, whatsoever. Again, this fervor leads to harm, which can be in any form; serious ailments, accidents, depression or even crime. We comply with destruction, because we deny compunction. We are losing the belief that lacunae can be filled and life can still be luminous and lit. We desperately seek a catharsis somewhere or in someone, even if it is the doctor who is treating our patient . We even try to find fault in our
“stars”. We seem to be at the brink of wiping out all the optimism out of life. There’s definitely a castle of positivity within all of us, yet we all get trapped in the moat of harm surrounding it. Something that needs serious speculation, so that sanity prevails.
In the words of Stephen Covey, the word responsibility is response-ability: the ability to choose your response. He says, highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behaviour is a product of their conscious choice, based on values. I would like to add that values develop, once we start valiantly embracing our culpability. Devastation can be avoided by just a small difference in demeanor.
Yes, I am a doctor bound by oath of doing no harm and I have felt the sense of responsibility connected with it, all my life. It is a very powerful and assertive statement, depicting dignity and divinity. Can’t we have a similar Hippocratic oath for us, as humans too? Just imagine, if we all are made to take this vow daily in the school as a part of daily assembly, atleast some reinforcement of non anguish can be done. After all our next generation deserves a better future.
I ain’t a saint or a philosopher, I am just penning this down straight from the heart, as an unbiased individual. I ardently feel that now is the time to extend this oath to each and every person around. In this caliginous and cold phase of life right now, only inner realisation of “ do no harm ”, can rekindle the much needed warmth.
“ Life is a blessing ,lets not turn it into a bane
Bereft of faith, lets not live in disdain
Hurt begets hurt and harm begets harm
Its about time …to shed qualm and spread calm “
