Our Patients Need a Human Touch

I have had an opportunity to work at D. B. Orthopaedic centre Occupational Therapy Out Patient Department for the past 9-10 years. During this clinical working period I have managed patients majorly from Orthopaedics, General Surgery and General Medicine Departments. I took enough experience in disability evaluation procedures by trial and error method; from seniors; through clinical cases; through undergraduate classroom teaching and one unique experience at DMER. I even wrote a letter to the Director of Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment through proper channels on paper and via electronic mail to send us the latest manual for evaluation. We at Occupational Therapy department were honoured to have a response from them and to recieve a copy of the manual free of cost for use by our staff and students.
Based on these clinical experiences I have had some examples of cases where I had an opportunity to take decisions for the betterment of our patient's future. I have one case to cite here to highlight the title of my blog topic. We had a 36 years old adult male patient working as a mechanic/electrician at BEST since the past few years and the sole earning member of the family. His family included his wife, elderly parents, school going son and a daughter; making a family of 6 dependant on 1. Unfortunately this young gentleman had an episode of stroke leaving him with paralytic dominant right upper and lower extremities. He consulted us 4 months post onset of illness by fluke because he was referred for unfit evaluation to our department by the managing physician and not for rehabilitation...........though not a rare situation to be faced by us. Family members including the patient were in despair and sad about the healthcare facility or to say underdeveloped facility as per their opinion. They were all the more worried because the patient was the only earning member of the family and was told to take unfit certificate at a very young age of 36 without any trials of treatment options.....! I couldn't accept this. I spent an hour or so to convince the patient and the family members especially patient's wife and father to comply on our treatment and give us a chance to bring about some improvement so that he could get back to his job though not full time and may not be for the same designation. Asked them to wait for disability evaluation. Patient and family members; both agreed to my opinion. Patient religiously attended our department for a period of 6-8 months 5 days a week. He even followed the home exercise program as per our advice. Guess what; patient showed clinically visible improvement to be able to perform all his basic activities of daily living; commute to and fro from home to our department via public transport independently. We took a chance as; BEST has a clause of sick leave for their employees for nearly a period of 1 year; and light duty facilities. We took the benefit of this and got maximum patient's cooperation. A day came when we did his disability evaluation and suggested light duty. Hospital physician and BEST physician agreed with our evaluation and patient was taken up for light duty in BEST.

That was the happiest moment for our patient and his family members. This could be seen when patient's father came to me just to say thank you and that "My son (our patient) has resumed light duty from today". It was so nice of him to trust us and get back to us just to acknowledge our treatment. This is human touch..........for which every patient of ours are longing for; from us.....care and not only cure is needed by them; it solves most of their problems which otherwise appear to be unbearable added to their already existing problems of life. This does not mean to encourage them by mere false hopes, but offer them practical solutions rather than be harsh towards their illness and poverty. If every patient of ours recieves quality treatment I would say heaven is here at KEM for our patients and nowhere else. This does not mean that the present scenario is reverse but the goal is not too far.......! Our approach is enough at times to care and cure them. We are here to treat patients as a whole; as human and not a case of one system of the body.......!