While patients call doctors God and trust them blindly for their wellbeing, this uncalled, unawarded pandemic has left their God helpless. With no specific treatment procedure or root cause, the front liners helplessly helped millions of affected COVID patients at the cost of their mental health and wellbeing. 

Since the beginning of their professional journeys, the lives of doctors are very stressful, but as being committed to their jobs they accept the stress. For a patient, his doctor should be always fresh, always stress-free and always available. During the pandemic ‘mental health’ and ‘front liner workers’ have been in limelight but 'metal health of our front liners' are neglected.

Talking to BW Businessworld about the mental health of doctors, RK Srivastav, Senior Secretary and Head of Mental Health department, Max Hospital highlighted a patient’s expectations from his doctor. “Society's perception about a doctor is different they consider doctors as a Superman, they should not have any emotions, family time, rest. They want them to work every day. It has been like that ever since,” he said. 

Healthcare workers are trained to handle stressful conditions, but when the threshold is crossed, they suffer from Exhaustion Syndrome. It occurs due to exposure to long-term chronic stress. Where the person keeps on delaying the issue and the stress becomes pathological. 

Due to prolonged exposure, the doctors feel burned out, affecting their daily lives. It leads to impulsive behaviour, sleepless nights, emotional outbursts, increase in alcohol intake. These problems are increasing day by day. 

Medicine is a profession that is always stressed out, be it pre or post COVID. But the pandemic has worsened the stress levels in the profession. Never-ending work hours, no proper treatment procedure, a never-ending queue of patients and on top of it people blaming the docs for managerial failures, have elevated the exhaustion in the profession. 

“As it was the pandemic, doctors did not know where to start and what is contributing positively. Results are less, but their efforts have become more,” stated Srivastav.

If it was not just caseload, the pandemic has made the healthcare workers be apart from their families for days and while visiting them, the constant fear of infecting their near and dear ones have also resulted in pressure exaggeration.

Adding to the issue, Srivastav highlighted, media is also somewhat contributing to tarnishing the image of the doctors. They are blamed, doctors are condemned for managerial faults. “Structural problems can be managed, but the chaos (due to pandemic) cannot,” affirmed Srivastav. We in India treat our doctors in extreme paradigms, on one hand, they are God and on the other, we keep listening to the harassment they undergo, making the nation unsafe for those who save our lives.  

Talking to all the doctors out there and advising them about stress management during the COVID times, Srivastav underlined , “We are fighters, we have to fight but yes, by keeping our health and mental state intact.” 

The way the frontline workers have saved humanity during these testing times is a supreme show of how selfless the medical profession is. Government and hospital management should make an environment for the doctors to be cool and calm and the doctor should feel confident about himself and his profession.