turf woes, tough wars.

The doctor had asked her, ''doc, how do you treat trichomonas vaginalis here?'' she had repressed the urge to ask him how it was treated elsewhere, jokingly she had responded that she was well above such student-like questions but at the end of her answer had placed 'flagyl'
''What, flagyl!'' he had seemed genuinely taken aback and whether it was the disbelief at the 'simplicity' of the remedy or the distrust for the respondent was not clear but he had summoned one of the senior clinicians at the facility to inquire if this was true.
''What dosage?'' now it was their turn to be pleasantly surprised.
As they had worked side by side(actually they shared a table) she had been under great duress from the laughter she had been suppressing.
This was in the comprehensive care clinic of a sub district hospital cum provincial rural training center. He was the head of the senior clinical team that came here twice weekly to review the seemingly hard boiled cases. She was a newly recruited clinical officer on her three month mentorship program.
Even during the consultation she had sneaked out time and again to go laugh at him and spread this little bit of news to anyone who cared to listen. She could not fathom how a senior medical officer could fail to know such a simple remedy.
Over lunch hour this had been the topic of discussion.
"Some conditions are rare and it's possible to forget their treatment", one clinician(let's call him Mose the defender) had asserted in defence of the doctor. This had only opened a barrage of fresh assaults on the poor doctor's competencies.
"But he works in a referral facility"
"And he is supposed to be the consultant here, he should know everything"
"It was just a simple, harmless, inquiry, why should you ridicule him for his honesty?" our good guy Mose had gone on.
"Ok no issue for forgetting but why doubt the response, does he believe 'we' are all idiots?"
"Besides we all know he's your friend so you have to defend him but he is a doctor for heaven's sake!"
"And the way he is always hard on us"
"You can't afford even a small mistake with ARVS and you know that very well", Mose had quipped.
"That's not in contention, it's just that this has to apply to all other conditions and medications"
Mose had finished with his lunch and left the others at their happy and demeaning chatter about competencies and incompetencies.

He had always been the silent conversationalist at such like cadre-staking discussions. But now he was riled by what he considered a complete senselessness that pervaded these discussions. He was a clinician himself and he knew they were not the downtrodden of medicine, but he also acknowledged the coldwars that existed between the nurses, doctors and them. This was the one discussion in which any meritorious argument always got subdued by the mudslinging that followed. The two contentious issues were the skewed working conditions and remuneration. Doctors were only on call-called only when required. All the while it was the others who sweated it out in the various departments. Of course this sentiment was not entirely true but it formed the base of the grouses that nurses and clinicians had against the doctors. Who was the real donkey here?
Nurses on the other hand regarded the clinicians as equals; they went to the same colleges and attained the same level of certificates. Did clinicians take this view? This was best played out in the health centers and dispensaries! And did doctors 'look' down clinical officers and nurses?
Mose appreciated the fact that these supremacy contests were no good and this was best seen when the care of a patient went wrong at the facility, then it was a good reason for fault finding, crocodile tearing, backstabbing, obsessive defenciveness and fixing each other.
The differences in remuneration against the services offered was the other thorny point; thorny indeed...

What infuriated Mose was the way this 'sibling' rivalry debate was going. On television and social media it was 'mudslinging, and unbridled contempt open season', the benign grudges festered. Had the various unions failed to reign in their belligerent members or at least some of them? But did the unions effectively execute their core mandates? There had to be a doctor, a nurse and a clinician. In his college training he remembered how much he had learnt from nurses and doctors. Why did genuine grievances have strains of bitterness against the other cadres? This did not apply to only them but the others as well, the unions had slept on their job but this was no license for the decline in the mutual respect amongst the three that perhaps shared the closest clinical kinship..