surely our patent's expectations are increasing & we are not able to keep in pace with that.

the recent incidence of dr couple bitten up by unhappy patients family & people of some political party is not off mind & i get to rad about a patient trying to kill a senior doctor in nasik.

patient was operated by that dr some 20 years ago for piles. he has recurrence of disease & he took out knife & hit dr in his head giving him a big cut. dr is admited in the hospital. now piles are known to recurr.

i believe that the old relation between dr & his patient is really dying. it is more of a professional approach than the personal one. and both parties are to be blamed for that. we drs for the lack of time may not be able to communicate to their satisfaction. patients today with availability of some partial knowledge & with easy availability of media & political parties have started feeling that when they go to doctor they ave to get better.

we drs are not gods & can help our patients with only available facilities. when my patients ask me about outcome of their illness i am at so much of loss. i tell them about possible outcomes of that disease & reassure them that if need be you may please call me at any odd hour of the day. i will answer your call & will try to suggest you the remedy but weather you would respond to that or no, is not in my hands.

" i treat & he cures " !!

last week in one day i had a three different experiences.
one patient came to me with extensive bilateral Tuberculosis. i examined the patient & looked at all his lab reports. after spending 15 minutes with him, i declared him having Tuberculosis. his entire family was upset with me. they felt that i should not have disclosed that he is suffering from TB. with 10 more patients waiting outside, i tried to do bet possible counseling for the disease & explained him the importance of taking regular treatment & told him that TB is fully treatable and curable disease. his son later on came to me and expressed his dislike towards me disclosing the disease to patient. i explained to him that it is very important that patient, who is not a minor, is told about his illness in details so that he understands the importance of taking treatment regularly. he felt that his father would be very upset with the fact that he is a case of TB. anyways he never came back to me.

the second patients relatives came to me before getting the patient and told me not to reveal the diagnosis to the patient. patient who is 23 years old girl about to get married. she was suffering from asthma. i did not disclose the diagnosis & she was put on treatment. she did not take treatment seriously as i was made to tell her that she has Minor lung infection. she did not start her inhalers at all feeling that it is just a small disease. she got admitted after 5 days in ICU of a tertiary care hospital in critically ill state. had she been told about her disease may be this admission would have been avoided.

the third case was elderly gentle man who came to me for some mild bronchitis. he gathered a lot of information from net on the symptoms he had. after my thorough evaluation i felt he just have mild bronchitis & told him to take antibiotics & other treatment for 7 to 10 days. but he suspected him to have lung cancer. he was so much worried that he could not sleep the whole night even after me convincing him that he does not have cancer. he had chest pain that night & had very high BP & had to be admitted in hospital. he was investigated had hyper tension due to the stress that he felt because of fear of cancer. after all sets of investigations he was discharged from hospital on 3rd day & was feeling much better.

there are many such incidences that occur daily. we have different kind of people with different personality visiting us & in that given 15 to 20 minutes it is very difficult to assess what do your patients expect from you.

diagnosing a disease is just one simpler part of the game the difficult most part is to convey that to the patient & their relatives, and we doctors many times fail there.

Hello friends !!

I am a medical professional, a chest physician. I am incharge of department of chest & TB at cooper municiple gen hospital, Mumbai. I am attached to various hospitals like Suchak hospital, Karuna hospital, Suvarna hospital etc. my main area of interests are asthma, COPD, TB & allergy related lung disease. I also practice critical care medicine & sleep medicine. I have my clinic at borivali west.

My father,Dr. C. K. vora is a family physician.
Mother,Mrs. Usha Vora is a house wife.
My wife is Dr. Bijal Vora & is an anaesthetist.
I have two children Naishadh & Aashka.
My brother Dr. Nigam Vora is dentist.
His wife Dr. Bhavini Vora is physiotherapist.

After my parents there a strong influence of a few people in my life.
First of all Prof. Dir. Dr. K. C. Mohanty, my teacher. I learnt my respiratory medicine under him & even today in all facets of life he is my guide.
Dr. Anil Suchak extended his support when i needed it the most. He gave oppertunity to a fresh chest physician not only at his hospital, Suchank Hospital, Mumbai but also introduced me to medical social field,to the extent that today I could rise to the post of vice president at Malad medical association. I have no words to express my gratitudes to him.
Dr. Umesh Khanna taught me do's & don'ts of practice & introduced me as an intensivist 10 years ago. With a few initial sucessful management of critically ill patients , it then became easier for me to make my identity. But without that early confidence from Dr. Khanna I would not have achieved that.
Bijal continuously supported me in all my ups & downs. Being extrovert I started travelling a lot. In no time I started getting invitations from various conferences & seminars for guest lectures, Bijal took charge of all necessary arrangements.with her around I do not have to think about any mishaps. On social front or professional front, with patients or with collegues without Bijal I would have not been able to do whatever I could do today. Bijal I may not have done it earlier but I thank you for being there.

Next came the patients. The best gift a patient can give you is bring in another patients. When a patients referes another one to me, I sense the satisfaction the refering patient must have got. I must thank all my patients who taught me my respiratory medicines.

Pharmaceuticals help can never be underestimated. Indian pharma is going through a big change. We are not behind the global market. With the state of the art R&D divisions & availability of newer drugs at much cheaper rate Indian pharma has its own uniqque place in world market. A doctor can not help any of his patients if pharma house does not support. Not only in terms of good cheap drugs, but also in terms of their efforts in promoting patient education materials. Without pharmaceutical help & their financial and moral support organising a medical conference is near impossible. Medical conferences & CMEs are the only ways to spread the latest developments in the medical field. The vast practitising medical community needs to be updates regularly in their specialised fields & a regular medical meets do that job. I have been very lucky to have great pharma friends.
The dear most friend & guide is Mr. Ashok Bhatia, president & member board of director Zydus Ltd. who apart from many other things taught me the importance of time management in clinical practice. We doctors are not taught about two major things throught out our medical carrier & I miss that a lot i.e. time managemnt & finance.
Before I joined LTMG Hospital for my post graduate studies in respiratory medicine after finishing graduation ( MBBS ) from grant medical college, I joined Nanavati hospital as RMO under Dr. S. S. Apte. At the time of admiison for post gradualte studies I went to him asking for guidance as I had a few options, either I could continue my studies there at the private hospital & do DNB in skin or paediatrics or join Municipal or teaching hospitals. I still rememnber his golden advice he said " I advice you to prefer sweeping floor of government or municipal teaching institue over taking training at private health institution for learning your subject. " It helped me choose the right curriculum.

Our close family friend Mr. Praful shah, financial advisor by profession guided me all throught out my life. I am so much impressed by his professional & personal support to me & my family that I just fail to take any decision on my own without asking him, be it buying a new car or investing in share, to travel during holidays, without his consultation things do not materialise at all. He has stimulated spiritual part of my life.

Mr. Rashmin sanghvi, charted accountnant by profession rationalised every query that I had & he explained to me the imortance of real values, aims & objectives in life. Life without mission or goals or targets does not have any meaning.

My uncle Capt. V. S. Shah, blessed me all thorughout. With straight forward & most practical thinking , his opinion & help at the right time was of great help.

I am lucky to have given more than 105 guest lectures so far in last 9 years at various national & international forum. which means one lecture every month almost.
The day I joined grant medical college as lecturer i met Dr. Mohanty and lying in front of me was his 22 paged CV. I was so impressed that first thing I asked him was sir I want to rise to this. He laughed at me & said it is not very easy. To make your contribution at national level one needs to sacrtifice not only their private life & make professional compromises but also it means a lot of financial loss. In medical practice one does not earn the day he is not available for consultation. It requires a lot of time to devote for research, analysis & to travel for lectures at national& international level. Today when I presented him my work , I see that satisfaction in his eyes & It pays off for all the compromises I have done to achieve that.

My friends Mukesh Jakhia, Mr. Vipul Sagar, Mr. Mayur Patel, Mr. Hiren Shah, Dr. Sanjeev Maniar, Siddharth Mishra, dr. mangesh tiwaskar, Dr. Ketan Mehta, Paresh soni, a lot of collegue drs, have a special place in my heart.
And of course Chintan, How can I forget you? He is my brother in law, who has motivated me to write this Blog..Thank you Chintan!

I thank all those who have been part of my life directly or indirectly today.