Whither family doctors?

A few months ago, I had been to an established private healthcare institution in Chennai to have my eyes tested. After examining my eyes thoroughly, the ophthalmologist told me that my left eye had a slight suspected immature cataract developing and might need treatment in about six months thence, if required. I was impressed by her professional competence in explaining things, descending to my level of understanding of my intricate eye health issue.

I said I would like only her to treat me for my cataract, if required in future. She politely said she was a retina specialist and so only a cataract specialist would do the job for me. I was confused. I thought an eye specialist took care of all problems related to the eyes and never knew there were finer eye specialists within eye specialists again. (I still could not decipher when my distant relative told me a few years ago that he had retired as an ‘assistant joint deputy director on special duty’ in a certain nameless and nondescript government department.)

Thankfully ignorant that I am, I grew up when the concept of ‘family doctor’ was the only advanced medical fraternity term that we ever understood as children, over some six-and-a-half decades ago, other than the health care extended, free, by the only government hospital in our small Andhra Pradesh town. My rich classmates only could afford family doctors then. The rest of us were happy with what the government doctor provided, at no cost to the family exchequer.

After it graduated from the lower middle class tag to the ordinary middle class grade, my family too had started priding to have had afforded a family doctor of our own, over a half a century ago. Our family doctor was like an encyclopaedia. Right from treating a humble wasp sting to swollen gums to major urinary or cardiac problems, he was a panacea for any health issues for all of us together, under the sun. His medicines worked like ambrosia on us. He had the unprinted diagnosis reports of each nerve in the body of all of us, on the back of his hand. He cured our every illness without a surgery. He was a indeed a godsend for us. We were always in awe of him. We children were taken to him compulsorily before we embarked on our summer vacations and he would prescribe one common compound mixture, a preventive medicine, but that which had worked wonders for us. A small name board was hung outside his house compound wall that read ‘RMP’, after his name, the expanded form of which dawned on me only after I settled in a job, much later, after he passed away: ‘RMP’ stood for ‘registered medical practitioner’, and he did not even have an MBBS degree. But our respect for him is still intact in us as he was our revered Dhanvanthari (doctor of the celestials).

The concept of ‘family doctors’ is almost extinct now in metros and other major cities at least, where healthcare has become the monopoly by private super-specialty hospitals. The tribe of family doctors is on a precarious wane now. The lexicon of specialist doctors is too infinite to remember like that of the names of new diseases being invented every day now. If at all there exist any family doctors now, they don’t prescribe any medicines for illnesses any more, but refer their ‘family patients’ to specialist doctors in private healthcare institutions, for a fee earned from both ends.

When my two NRI grandchildren came to stay with us this summer, I asked them casually who was their ‘family doctor’, at their overseas place of stay. Pat came the reply, “Of course, our mother.” I was flabbergasted at their assertive stance. The elder of them continued, “Whenever we had any health issue, our mom would consult her mom or our dad’s parents, that is you, and cure us of the problem for sure, without any hype. How true is the child’s innocent blurting, I thought. Family doctors are not extinct now and they are very much practising their profession yet, but in the form of moms. Who can be a better family doctor than one’s own mom?

With hindsight, all my doubts on our childhood healthcare stood unveiled before me. Who can excel in the precious family doctor at one’s own home? That leaves me now in the awe, of my unqualified doctor, mom, a mother of seven children, who handled our illnesses when we had no family doctor to name, till then, yet.

pushpasaran@yahoo.co.in