April 25th, 2024

Compassion and decency in difficult times

By Letter to the Editor on February 5, 2020.

As a specialist physician and surgeon in the community, I have been fortunate to work with many inspiring colleagues at the frontline of our health care system, and it has been an amazing journey over the last twelve years. My then “young” family immigrated to Canada in 2007, and we could not have felt more at home in Medicine Hat in spite of being the “visible minorities.” My wife and I have tried our best to put the specialist training from India and England to our practice, and in return, we have been overwhelmed with the love, affection and acceptance from this lovely community that we have made home over the last 12 years. This story of gratitude and belongingness is just not ours, but true for many more Hatters.

As a surgeon in the front line, I have always been amazed with the sight of a well functioning surgical suite at the early hours of the morning when most in our community would still be in their beds, yet the young nursing staff who would have left their children at a day care would be working hard with the cleaners and porters, the unsung heroes of our health care system, to make the operating rooms ready for our patients! When some of these frontline staff are worried about their pay cheques and livelihoods, the least we could do is to acknowledge their services rather than complaining that the public sector staff in health care and education get an easy ride compared to others. We all are in this difficult time together, and a bit of genuine understanding and compassion towards each other would go a long way to alleviate the economic anxiety and hardships in our community.

We understand that differences of ideas, especially in times of economic hardships, can bring out some passionate emotions, and for the sake of our society and future generations, we all should take responsibilities with our words and actions to stem the cascading negativities in our current public discourse.

No matter how different our beliefs and ideologies can seem, be it our teachers or oilpatch workers, we all are fighting these difficult times together, and if the past is any guidance for our hope and future, we have every reason to believe that our community will prevail and flourish through these difficult challenges with the compassion and decency we extend towards each other!

Dr. Debkant Jena

Medicine Hat

(This is the writer’s personal opinion as a physician and does not reflect his position as a leader of AHS)

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mr black
mr black
4 years ago

Well spoken Dr. Jena, those are words of a compassionate person. I don’t know you personally but your values are my values and that makes you a special person most welcomed in our society in my book.

As you mentioned, we are all in this together, unfortunately we are dealing with a provincial government that does not share those same values. jason kenney only understands what’s best for him and clearly he will cheat, scam or steal to get what he wants.

The good people of Alberta might see this as a wakeup call, before all is said and done, jason kenney will have decimated our health care in Alberta.

Fedup Conservative
Fedup Conservative
4 years ago

Well said both of you. I will never forget the nurses bawling their eyes out in my office when Klein deliberately destroyed their careers. I helped nine doctors and at least two dozen nurses relocate out of this province and not one wanted to go. I’m certainly not about to forgive and forget the fact that he almost killed my father with his health care after members of our family had spent countless hours volunteering for the Lougheed and Getty governments and dad had donated around $30,000. to their party over the years. Now that Kenney is promising more of the same, I’m sure his supporters must feel really proud that they may have put their lives at risk by supporting him.

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