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.