‘Aadhaige doctarun’

In a few months’ time I will become a doctor and will go home after what has seemed like an eternity in Nepal. It will be one of my biggest achievements, as it is for any person who becomes a doctor. Training to become a doctor is tough. The amount of theoretical detail you have to know is enormous. The practical skill you need to acquire is demanding and challenging, more so because you are dealing with a human being. The social interactions you encounter, while mostly pleasant can be emotionally taxing at times. The burden of carrying the knowledge that your actions or inactions can have life changing impacts on people’s lives can only be understood by a doctor. To become a doctor is one of the noblest and selfless things you can do. And there is certainly nothing ordinary about it.

So why is that I will be labeled an ‘aadhaige doctor’ once I go home? Does any one hear a talk of ‘aadhaige lawyerun’ or ‘aadhaige teacherun’ or ‘addhaige engineerun’? Hardly ever. After all the hard work you put in, all you get to be is ‘aadhaige (ordinary)?’ Here is a dictionary definition of ‘ordinary’:

Ordinary:
·Not exceptional in any way especially in quality or ability or size or degree;
·Lacking special distinction, rank, or status

With all the knowledge and skill you have acquired, it almost makes you cry. The word ‘aadhaige’ in Dhivehi is used, for the most part, in this context to mean that you are ‘not specialized’. For a lack of a word for ‘specialist’ people have opted to use ‘aadhiage’ to differentiate the specialists from non-specialists doctors. As it is, the word is harmless and quite innocent if you don’t read too much into it.

And it may not be as upsetting if the public did not take the meaning of the word ‘aadhaige /ordinary’ to heart literally.

But words do convey meaning and if one examines the current doctor-patient relationships in Male’, the effect it has had on the general outlook regarding doctors is obvious-that a doctor cannot be trusted or knows little if he/she is not specialized. The public has to come to know that to become a specialist you first need to get an MBBS degree and that each specialist used to be an MBBS doctor.

The adoption of the word ‘aadahige’ and its effect on the doctor-patient relationship is as important as the reasons for the existing contempt for the health care system and its resulting failure to establish a healthy and productive relationship between the patient and the doctor. (This I will discuss later on)