For Baqai students, it’s Gray’s Anatomy from now on... not Google

Baqai Medical University welcomes its new students on Wednesday.

KARACHI: Freshmen at the Baqai Medical University were reminded on Wednesday that their lives will now revolve around their patients, not their social engagements.

And while Google and Facebook may have changed the way we work, Dr SM Rab - the founding fellow of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Pakistan - begged to differ.

He also noted that technology was more of a bane than a boon. “Every one of you has two things that students in the past did not: cell phones and internet. In a majority of the cases, both these things become obstructions to the process of obtaining knowledge.”

The Baqai Medical University organised an event to welcome around 100 new students of medicine and 28 studying dentistry. The former head of the Higher Education Commission head Dr Attaur Rehman was the chief guest and Dr SM Rab was the guest of honour.

“In our new world, it is said that a doctor is a mere agent or instrument that helps run a hospital in assistance with other equipments and machines,” said Dr S M Rab. “If God has chosen you to be what you want to be, then please do justice with your profession and in that, compassion with your patients is the key.”

He quipped that people have to take their profession seriously and not take leave to “attend a wedding or because dad won’t be able to drive [them] to the workplace.”

He recalled that when he first started work, being a doctor meant being on duty around-the-clock. “This, however, has changed over time and now there is a tendency to treat this as a part-time profession.”



On their first day, the students appeared jittery, which is perhaps why very few of them took the opportunity to break the ice with their peers.

As their beaming parents looked on, the nervous students were called on stage by their respective heads - Prof. Intisar Zahid Khan, the principal of Baqai Medical College, and Dr Kashif Ikram, Baqai Dental College’s principal. Their beaming parents looked on at them with a hint of pride in their eyes.

Dr Ikram said that the field of dentistry has advanced a lot over the past decade and now doctors believe in treating the patients as a person rather than fixating on the jaw, extracting their teeth. “The time-worn formula of ‘ilaj-e-dandaN ... ikhraj-e-danaaN’ [removal of teeth is the only remedy for dental ailment] is not valid anymore,” he said.

He took pride in stating that of all 10,000 registered dentists with the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council, 1,200 were alumni of Baqai Dental College. According to the university’s vice chancellor, Prof. Dr Zahida Baqai, the institution had admitted its 26th batch of medicine and 23rd batch of dentistry.



In his concluding remarks, the university’s Chancellor Prof. Dr Fareeduddin Baqai said that it was a responsibility on every educated individual to teach at least one uneducated person. While terming medicine as one of the noblest profession, he said that it was his belief that those parents who work to groom their child as a doctor change the fate of their household.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2012.