Trafficking Women

The training of interns is meticulously spelled out in the curriculum of medical students. However they are often given jobs that are out of this curriculum. It may be said that sometimes whatever work that no one else can or will do is handed down to interns. I myself avoid doing that any time because I understand that they are doctors (in the making) and also human beings. I never tell them to do anything that I would not do myself, and I never do anything that a doctor should not do, except in an emergency with no personnel to do that job. This particular intern was posted in the unit of a colleague. There was a big crowd of women patients. The layout of the outpatient clinic left much to be desired, and women were getting easily confused. So this intern was asked to stand in the middle and guide the patients to appropriate rooms to facilitate a smooth flow of patients and work. The unit head arrived, found him standing in the middle of the waiting hall sending patients in different directions, and got perplexed. “What are you doing?” she asked him. “Madam, I am trafficking women” he answered. “Trafficking ….?” She was aghast. It was a justified reaction. We read about women-trafficking in newspapers. But to hear an intern saying he was doing that was too much. “What do you mean?” “I am guiding them like a traffic police” he explained.