A typical day of an Orthopeditian.

Orthopeditians are one of the most highly paid surgeons in the whole medical fraternity and with increasing no. of Road traffic accidents, without any doubt, their importance will increase with passage of time. Day of an Orthopeditian may be divided in two type of days like any other surgeon. Some day he will visit patients in OPD and on others, they will do some surgeries.

6:00 am- Most of the Doctors now a days are Health conscious, for most of them, day starts with light exercise. The exercise session continues for 30 minutes or so. Then they do their morning needful and are ready to join their respective Medical College/ Hospital before the clock gets to 8.

8:00 am- The day at work generally starts with a 1 hour class for Undergraduate students.

9:00 am- It’s OPD time. In OPD, an Orthopeditian visits 40-50 patients on a typical day. Patient’s ranges from different fractures to postoperative patients who come for follow up. The patients with vague body pain are managed by Junior residents only. During this time, he may need to teach students who came for clinical classes. Generally the teaching process and the OPD consultation go on concurrently. The doctor explains different cases to the students.

1:00 pm- It’s time for some lunch. OPD session continues after the lunch is over.

4:00pm- OPD timing is over. Now the doctor visits different wards to attend the calls. Suppose a patient is admitted with fever in Medicine ward and now he is having vertigo, the Orthopeditian will be called and he will attend it after OPD hours generally, but immediately if the patient is serious. After attending calls, the doctor is free to go.

5:00pm- The doctor now sits in his personal chamber and visits his personal patients, sometimes; he does some surgeries in private hospitals or nursing homes.

10:00pm- Patients are over; the doctor returns to home and spends some time with his family members. Then after dinner, they update themselves by reading some journals. As the clock strikes 12am, it’s time to sleep.

If it is surgery day, the schedule is almost same, just the OPD hours are substituted by surgery.

A typical day of an MO (GP) posted in rural PHC.

General Practitioners are the doctors who are holding MBBS degree and are posted in rural PHCs. They are addressed as MO (Medical officer). Their primary job is to provide primary level care to the patients of locality. This includes OPD consultation and in ward service for expectant ladies and patients who can be managed in PHC setting like diarrhea, hypoglycemia etc.

7:00 am- The day starts with a cup of hot tea. While sipping the tea and flipping through the pages of previous day’s news paper, the doctor entertains the patients who came for his private consultation.

9:00 am- It’s OPD time. The doctor sit’s in OPD and visits around 35-60 patients. Most patients visits with common problems like cough and cold, acidity etc. 3-4 patients does come with complicated problems. The OPD hour continues till 1pm. After completion of OPD, the doctor visits admitted patients who are mostly less than 5. It takes half an hour at max.

1:30 pm- It’s free time for the doctor if there is no emergency patient is admitted. He freshens up, takes his lunch and sometimes even enjoys siesta during this period.

4:00 pm- He again sits in hospital and visits the patients in OPD. Sometimes, patients visit with cut injuries or impacted foreign bodies. The doctor needs to remove them, most of the time with his bare hands and some pre-historic equipment. OPD continues up to 6pm.

6:00 pm onwards- the doctor is free to visit patients in his personal chamber. He is on call and needs to visit the PHC if some emergency patient comes. Most of the emergency patients are generally referred after primary management as there is very less facilities available in PHC.

9:00 pm- Most of the locality is already asleep. It’s time for doctor too to get some sound sleep. After dinner he flips through some latest medical journals and then he goes to sleep with hope that everyone will be healthy and he won’t need to wake up at night to attend some MI patient.

At least 2 doctors are posted in PHC. Hence after every 24 hours of duty, doctor gets 24 hours rest.