Dr Arun Wadhwa is a well-known Pediatrician of South Delhi. He has been in practice for last 13 years. The main clinic is in GK-II and is attached to Apollo Hospital and most of the nursing homes close by. The practice was started in a small way in a first floor room of the house and over the years has occupied the whole floor. He gets patients from all over Delhi specially the satellite towns of NOIDA and DLF.
Dr Wadhwa is from the first batch of DPS RK Puram. He did is graduation, post graduation and residency training from Safdarjang Hospital and since then has been in practice. His choice of area was tough – in the heart of posh South Delhi and there were established names all around. He still remembers his first few years when the total monthly income averaged Rs.3000. This was after running around from one nursing home to another for a single patient. He still vividly remembers night calls from remote area nursing homes for paltry sums. The day he earned Rs.200 it was a treat day for his wife. Today he has no time to spare a few minutes for her and family.
The USP of his success has been like all other practitioners of the science – ABC – Availability, Behaviour and Competence. Although he says there can be another C – cut and commission in which he never indulged either way. Availability is not a problem these days because of the cell phone. Here he has a word of caution – the facility is more misused than used but a newcomer probably cannot avoid being a part of it. Behaviour is probably the most important and one has to control emotions tensions and keep smiling throughout the day till the oral muscles are tired of being stretched. With a post-graduate degree and residency training from a good public hospital Competence is not a problem. Here the art lies in deciding the patients who need admission, who needs a super-specialist opinion and who would probably need a second opinion from a colleague. On referring one does run a risk of losing the patient but it still is better than wrong treatment. Dr Wadhwa emphasizes that to have a good name amongst doctors refrain from the last C of cuts and commission.
Along with the busy practice he makes it a point to attend all seminars and conferences including the annual conference held anywhere in India. This not only helps in being in academic touch but also helps in better treatment discussions with patients as most of them are now armed with news cuttings and internet printouts. There could be nothing worse than practicing primitive medicine in this era.
He does have a few regrets in life too. He says he would have loved to go abroad for training in pediatric super-specialties like cardiology, neurology or oncology etc. Due to some family compulsions he stayed back thinking it was a temporary practice phase but eventually got stuck. He strongly advises young pediatricians to take up any specialty subject of choice as a few years down the line GP will mean not General practitioner but General Pediatrician.