The other side of health care !

This board at the entrance of the CMC Hospital Ludhiana made me reflect about some realities in health care. 

There are many who need subsidised or free health care inspite of the efforts to provide it at the government hospitals and through insurance schemes. They are on the increase inspite of the trickle down effect of globalisation and neo-lieral economic policies. 

Many would like to get the subsidised or free care from patient friendly hospitals where health care is practiced compassionately and based on sound ethical practices under the care of competent and experienced professionals. 

The health care is a costly investment which many in this disadvantaged group would find it difficult  to make inspite of the desperation to do so. The debt trap and life long economic burden this creates is phenomenal that families are hesitant to seek health care. I have a neighbour who has a nodule in the Thyroid for five years now and still not ready to go to the hospital for fear of all that it would involve to get admitted in a hospital surgery. His fear is that it would cause unforeseen difficulties and financial stress.

I was called to see a one month old infant in the neighbourhood who has an early sign of infantile eczema. The family did not seek medical help for three weeks because the heavy cost of visiting a specialist. A 8 year old child with his family came to visit us at night to get some advice about his fever lasting for a week now. They too waited to avoid a costly treatment.  

I was glad to see the above bard, because CMC Ludhiana is showing the way to be inclusive in our approach to health care for the disadvantaged. Well done and it would hopefully show the way for other hospitals!

M.C.Mathew(photo and text)

A disturbing advertisement!

I have been of late observing a new trend in advertisements in the print and TV. One common instinct is to make them as sensational as possible to get the attention of the readers and viewers. All the advertisements are required to follow some ethical guidelines- one of them being that the advt. should not be suggestive for a risky behaviour. 

This advt. in a leading English news paper by a pharmaceutical company violates that very guideline. Although the national body who is watch body to enforce ethical practices in advertisement exists, it  does not have a regulatory or penalising function, but only a recommendatory role!

Human behaviour is changing! The above picture is a computer trick of photography. But when a three years old child looks at this picture, he or she is fascinated by the adventure instinct. It is not uncommon for me to hear parents tell me that their three year child attempted something which he watched in the TV! One such incident was a cycle race he saw in an advert. He saw  a cycle  used by a film star for racing! He too raced his cycle in the street and lost control. His face was bruised. 

I wonder whether the designers of the adverts. would pause and consider the impact of what they produce on children and adolescents! I agonise over how women's body has become the commonest advertisement feature to draw people's attention! The moral fabric of a nation can be determined by the way we advertise the consumer products!  

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Bamboo is nature's gift!

One of the uses of Bamboo is for building houses, which had gone into disrepute, since bricks replaced its use about fifty years back. However, I notice bamboo returning to its rightful place for use in the buildings. The house, cow shed and the outhouse in my parent's home about sixty years back was made of bamboo both for its walls and roof.

The treated and reinforced bamboo has long life even in adverse climatic conditions. It is now used to make different furniture, interior of houses for false ceiling, walls and partitions. It may not last like the plywood but it is cheaper and easy to fabricate. The handicraft items which are made of bamboo are extremely popular. As the bamboo stem is hollow inside, it has been traditionally used to store solids and semisolids. I saw its use in a home recently. 

The bamboo plants grow well in any terrain and protects the soil from erosion. The bamboo stem adds to colour to the garden as some varieties are ornamental and provides an aesthetic look. The three sites we planted bamboo in our cottage premises two years back, a yellow and slender variety, are frequented by birds and I hope they would make them their nesting sites.  

Anna and I have been experimenting to make our garden look natural. Now that we have replaced the surface vegetation with lawn grass, the overgrowth of weeds is under check. 

This in itself is a symbol of how even our inner landscape can become healthier and wholesome if we can  pay attention to our interior through contemplative prayer! I wish the language of love and compassion would grow within us even more!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

New leadership at BBH

I am back in the Bangalore Baptist Hospital guest house  after attending the handing over ceremony of the leadership of the hospital. Dr. Alex after eight years of most effective leadership, during which time the hospital received many national awards for its excellence in clinical service, quality control, education, etc. passed on the mantle of leadership to Dr. Naveen at the hospital chapel. It was a worshipful and solemn service. There was a prayerful and grateful ambience in the chapel.

Naveen and Asha later were greeted by the staff and visitors in the office, which would be his place of activity for the next five years. 

Anna and I have known Naveen as one who takes his calling soberly and responsibly. Asha inherited leadership qualities from her parents, Drs. Kuruvella and Susan Varkey of the Christian Fellowship Hospital Oddanchatram. It was refreshing to see them conduct themselves gracefully and cheerfully conveying confidence and humility during and after the investiture ceremony.

Every time I come to the Baptist hospital, I continue to be amazed at the way the hospital has moved on from the brink of closure in the early eighties. It is a story of God's enabling for its leaders.

I remember Dr. Rebecca Naylor the founder director, telling me  a few times in the mid eighties the challenge of keeping the hospital going after her expatriate colleagues returned to the United States of America and the Baptist Mission having a second thoughts about continuing its association with the hospital. I was associated with the Emmanuel Hospital Association then and explored if the EHA would take over the governance of the hospital for which Dr. Naylor showed a keen interest. When that did not happen, the Christian Medical College, Vellore responded positively after some persuasion to take over its governance. This was the first time CMC did anything like that to support a mission hospital for its continuance. That is now seen as the seminal event, which made the Baptist Hospital what it is today as a Christian Hospital, showing the way for all the mission hospitals to reinvent its role, governance and direction.

The BBH adapted, changed, and now is at the threshold of another leap forward. This is the Lord's doing. Well done, Dr. Alex for you have been faithful. Welcome, Naveen, to serve with a calling!

M.C.Mathew(Text and poto)   

Telephoning displaces conversations!

I watched this colleague send a ‘I will call you later’ message while interrupted by a telephone call during a conversation. That made me reflect on our interactive practices. 

Most of us  use the phone often  when we need something from another person. It is the need that prompts us to make a call. It is true that we would also call others to get in touch with and have a social  and friendly conversation. 

However from an enquiry with ten friends, I realised that while we would have about twenty or so telephone calls we make or receive during the working hours to ‘get the work done’, there may not be any occasions for personal social or friendly conversations. We tend to substitute personal visits by telephone calls.

The post-modern culture endorses individualism and insular living! This is pushing us to become even more lonely. The social media make us think, react and behave to the popular agenda others set. In fact we can be living impulsively conditioned by the thoughts and aspirations of others. 

This calls for conversation times where we begin by telling others in a self disclosure ambience something about our feelings, longings, disappointments or learning. We draw others in to our inner world where we form our values and attitudes. It is for this reason, we need to include Bible, good books,  thematic conversations, etc to become our resources for our personal formation.

As we humans we are more than the work we do- we are created beings in the image of God. This makes us to live responsibly communicating the character of God!  

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)  

Trans-generational conversation!

Tarun who visited us at home last week, has recently joined as a consultant in Medicine after completing his post-gradaute training. He has been a diligent and versatile student thus far. 

One of the questions he raised with us during the conversation was, ‘how to capture the story of the early years of the current day and retired teachers!' Tarun believes  that there a lot we can learn from their learning experiences during student days. The practice of medicine has changed due to the changes in ethics, ethos, approaches, etc.  He wondered whether retelling the story of how  medicine was practiced thirty years back would stimulate and inspire the students to treasure values and reset their priorities.

Anna and I were stimulated by this conversation. It became evident to us that even well accomplished young doctors seem to find something missing in the way we practice medicine, in spite of the advances in technology they have access to. They are searching for a meaning and purpose that they can live with beyond just treating patients and seeing them get better clinically. He did suggest that the ‘wholistic approach’ is a challenge to practice. Yet it seems to hold hope for the future!

I wish we can create a forum to raise such questions and make occasions to hear from senior colleagues about the way they lived fulfilled and holistic lives! 

Anna and I realised that Tarun was addressing us, who were thirty plus years older in the profession! The younger people in the profession are seeking for an identity that they can live with in the profession - wholistic physicians.

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Growing up without crying !

Most people interested in behaviour sciences would have  read the book The Road Less Travelled  or heard about Dr. Scott Peck, the author of the book. 

The authentic biography of Dr. Peck by Arthur Jones is a book full of valid explanations about the way Dr. Peck behaved, communicated, cared for patients and created an integrated approach in psychotherapy.

From the age of eight years Dr. Peck seemed to have stopped crying for about thirty years. While in a new school, he was required to take the dictation of the story of Brutus, which the teacher was reading out to the students about the spider and Brutus. Instead of writing down what the teacher was dictating, he was taken up by the challenge and the moral of the story. It was distracting for him to write because the story consumed his full attention. His class mates sitting next to him teased him for ‘not being able’ to write and the teacher too scolded him for that. Dr. peck cried and went home crying for which he got ridiculed by other children at the school.  He was scolded at home. That gave him a message that ‘boys ought not to cry’! 

He grew up through most trying experiences in life not crying, even when he felt sad enough to cry. It was when he was thirty seven years of age he was able to be free himself from this ‘obsession’ not to cry! 

The biography throws much light into the life of this psychiatrist, who captured the attention of millions of readers through his book The Road less travelled (seven million). It is a book of struggles, set backs, drivenness, discoveries, innovative approaches in psychotherapy and spirituality, turning adverse circumstances into opportunities, etc. Dr. Scott Peck enjoyed being in the centre stage for about two decades as a thinker, writer, orator and leader who influenced the practice of Psychiatry globally. His latter years became more demanding on him with decline in health due to Parkinson’s disease and some obsessive patterns which reduced his effectiveness.  

It is a biography that helps us to understand how childhood environment has a critical influence in the evolution of the adult behaviour!   

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)