Is it a sin to treat a patient? 

Today it happened with me. Being a child specialist working in a Medical College, we have a newborn patient admitted in our NICU( Neonatal Intensive care Unit). The patient is very sick, suffering from Resistant Sepsis ( infection of the blood) and under mechanical ventilation( breathing artificially). 

We have been telling the patient party that the condition is serious and antibiotics don’t seem to be working on this bacteria that is super resistant. Chances of survival are very low. Any doctor would understand this. But trying to explain to the patient party and few others, and one of them gets aggressive.  

Today I feel threatened, because I fear for safety of doctors and nurses working in my department and for myself too. It is very strange that today I am less bothered about the whether the patient will survive or not; but whether we will survive if the patient does not make it. This is happening in Sikkim, a state with one of the lowest crime rates in the country.

Is this why we became doctors?

Is this our fault that humans are not immortal?

Can we ever work without any fear?

Every doctor working anywhere in India thinks this everyday

“Do I have to commit suicide before such aggression from the society ends?”

“Do I have to commit suicide like Dr Archana Sharma so that my voice is heard?”