Once upon a time in a city which had no border....

Once upon a time in a city which had no border and no leader and where people were appointed from other cities by a big boss lived a young gentleman who worked in a modern superstore. The superstore was very modern made for rich people, but poor would also come for their special needs. The young man was from the middle class but with a heart beating for poor people. His life was very interesting, selling for rich and poor. There were times when upper class people would come and would expect workers to work for them as servants. One day a friend of mayor who was appointed by the big boss to keep a close eye on the mayor came to the superstore. Entering the store, he was welcomed by the young man. With the mentality that all people living in the city were servants of mayor and his big boss he even didn’t look to the young man. With his head up and eyes in the sky and streaks on forehead he started asking questions from the young man. The young man was answering the questions calmly. Though the young man had good education, but to the proud buyer he was just a stupid servant. After few questions the cubby friend of mayor understood that he was facing an educated gentleman, and that he would never bow his head as servant to him. During buying his needs they were talking about mayor. The chubby and proud friend started complaining from the mayor, that he was doing what he wanted and acting in a one man show manner, and people around the mayor were stupid. This conversation ended shortly with some more complaints. The young man wrote a part of the story in his diary, which other people could also read. The intention of the young man was to show what kind of people were ruling on the city, with stupid kind of mentality. Months passed from this story, many people read it. One day an important person from the super market came, exploding from anger, with shaking voice shouted why he has written such thing. In that city writing about mayor and his band was not allowed. He was warned to erase the story otherwise he would go to jail for such kind of “CRIME”. The young man resisted and accepted the risk, just to tell the truth to his people, but letter on he thought he has other ways to resist against the imposed system. So he tore that page from his diary and put it in a secure area. The young man is still in that city, with stronger faith against what was imposed on his city from outside. He has promised to write more and talk more with his people. He has planned to work more with poor people, to sell cheaper to poor ones. He has promised to take any risk in the favor of city, even if it takes his life.

Where to Find Professionalism?

Almost a year ago at this time I was so happy that is hard to explain. In these days I was joining back family. I had been working for a year in very remote areas of the country with challenges. Though I was losing a lot in terms of better salary, but joining family and the new job I was offered in one of private hospitals in the capital were better then everything I had at that time. And now it is almost a year I am here in a private hospital, working as consultant family physician. Working in Samangan, Badakhshan and in a private hospital showed me different faces of professional life in my country. In CURE we were in an academic place, working as pure professionals, thinking as pure professionals and acting as pure professionals. I was thinking I will always have this privilege to practice professionalism easily outside, but now I can hardly see the “professionalism” any where, even when I go back to CURE I can not find that real one there too. Instead what I see is business and cheating. How you grow your business and how you cheat a patient to fill your pocket, is something you can easily find anywhere. Seldom someone will care how good service you are giving to a person, but they will surely have a close eye on how much you generate for them. If you are working with a government or a charity NGO, all what they want is to report more, to show them graphs of your activity, no matter what was the quality. And if you are working in a private industry all what you need to do is to generate them money. Money and business on patients health were two enemies of mine when I was in training, but working in this corrupt environment is slowly making me immune to them. There have many instances that I have advised investigations or prescriptions, but my little man has shouted “Aziz! Are you sure your patient really needs it or it is a matter of your own business?” and there have been times that I have torn papers just to make sure that I am not doing any business. To fight this malpractice and this mal-business in private sector, I have planned to go and set my own setting. Am I able to go against the stream or I would be a part of it? I don’t know, but I may judge myself in one year.