Dr. P K Sasidharan
Is medical profession becoming unattractive?
Scope for modern medical doctors is brighter than ever provided they decide to become competent and confident GPs or good internal medicine doctors in future:
GPs have to acquire adequate and fine tuned clinical skill with extra training after MBBS and start a clinic or join government services and rest will be looked after by people and the governments
Scope is very bright for internal Medicine( MD general Med) too provided they develop maximum clinical skill and continue to work in Internal medicine rather than prematurely going into sub specialisation
Of course the other general specialists too would have scope provided they remain as generalists in their respective fields.
But in future there is limited scope for the sub specialists/super specialists, contrary to what is perceived by the public and the political leaders.
Let us realise that GPs/family doctors, and other generalist doctors with clinical skill have vanished from India during the last seven decades.
Public, Government and even doctors do not know who are true family doctors and what is needed by an MBBS doctor to become a good family doctor. No one in India knows the difference between Family doctors and General Medicine!
There is a huge vacuum of good quality GPs(family doctors) in India which is occupied by quacks of different types.
GPs/family doctors don’t have to market themselves -if they stick to one place, people will come looking for them wherever they are and will certainly in due course of time become friends, philosophers and guides to individuals and families, even if they are running private clinics.
Internal medicine doctors only have the potential to transform to GPs ( but still they lack the ability to become true family doctors) At the moment the huge vacuum of missing family doctors is partly used by internal medicine people who are practising as GPs in India but they can never fill up the huge vacuum.
AYUSH and several quacks of all shades are trying to occupy the space of missing family doctors in India. Internal Medicine is a hospitalist or hospital based generalist whereas family doctors are community based generalist – both are supposed to provide person centred care -there is no need to confuse or oppose one another.
But in India, all those who abuse medical profession, all doctors who work for money, will prevent the growth of family practice, because the non- system in India is now open to business and is private dominated and is worse than the worst model in USA.
I am sidelined, ignored and avoided from academic activities by my own colleagues for promoting family doctors.
MBBS doctors should know that super specialities are super saturated already and now they are looking for opportunities to expand their scope by becoming a GP with their specialised training- but it is a dangerous trend.
