Blogs from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, Asia - page 18

There are separate male and female wards here. Just to emphasize that fact, the two gender-based wards are separated by 2 floors. These wards, as I've demonstrated in some of the photos posted earlier, are essentially colossal rooms crammed with beds from end-to-end. It makes sense that the two adult sexes should be separated, right? But what about the pediatrics population? Did you know that there are no children above the age of 12 in the Pediatric wards? The reasons are fairly straightward: the hospital does not want male and female children, who are "of age", to be placed together in the same area. Due to bedside procedures and general physical exams, it can be necessary that the adolescents disrobe, so the inevitable embarassing situation is mitigated by moving the adolescents to their respective gender's adult ... read more

I figured it out! There is a local government body called the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), which amongst other things, funds and operates KEM Hospital to serve Mumbai's urban poor. It has allowed the hospital to evolve into the massive tertiary care center that is has become. Cost of care for the citizenry is heavily subsidized by the MCGM, which operates on an enormous budget funded by taxpayers. I suppose this is not unlike how our county hospitals operate under state tax revenues in the USA, but because of the high volume of generic pharmaceutical manufacturers in India, KEM is able to provide cheap medicines that would be enormously expensive in the USA. For example, Zosyn (Piperacillin-Tazobactam), our famous shotgun-approach IV antibiotic, is priced at a mere fraction of the cost here. I would ... read more

Saturday was a very low-key day at KEM. The emergency room was calm, the medical ward was only sparsely occuped, and the highly unusual cases were nowhere to be seen. Sunday is a holiday for medical students, so I took advantage by doing non-medical stuff! On Saturday after rounds, a Seth GS Medical College student named Rahul, whom I had met a few days prior, invited me, Khaled, and Nasir to his home in Virar, a suburb that is found on at the very last stop of the Mumbai Western rail line. It was a good 1.5 hours from the hospital. This is actually a very common practice in Indian culture as a whole. Whether north, south, east, or west Indian (or any other differentiation you feel like making), the rules of hospitality remain congruent throughout ... read more

As a medical student, going on rounds at KEM is very fun, plain and simple. As I mentioned before, your clinical responsibilities are fewer than back at home, but the learning opportunities are arguably better. You are expected to listen attentively, take notes, and examine patients when interesting physical findings pop up on your patients. Not only that, but the sheer number of people managed by a single doctor is so vast that the diversity of pathology is unparalleled. You see just about everything here, and you definitely have the time and flexibility to assiduously examine the patients with the most noteworthy findings. Because there is usually such a large group of students (I'd say 3 or 4 layers worth) sheepishly following their senior doctor, there is a lot of background discussion amongst the students about ... read more

To start off, KEM Medical students = awesome. So friendly, so smart, so hard-working. I am very impressed with what I have seen from them so far. I've also been able to become friends with the foreign medical students that are here. Khaled and Nasir Khan are originally from Afghanistan, but they go to medical school in China (and they speak Mandarin!). They are my suitemates, and we have spent a great deal of time together. They have been invaluable to me as patient translators, as their Hindi is so solid. I have also had the pleasure of meeting Katie Dickson & Sam from the UK, Genevieve Verrastro from the USA, and Ninad Apte from Germany. During the last 2 days, I have had the pleasure of spending time with Dr. Nikhil Karnik in different clinical ... read more