The Fourth Lesson: Healing the Healers: Restoring the Soul of Medicine

A reflection on the fading culture of mentorship in medicine and the urgent need to restore humanity, compassion, and purpose in healthcare beginning with how we teach, guide, and heal.

Dr Biswajit Mohapatra

11/6/20253 min read

When my article “The Third Lesson: When Not to Intervene” was published, I never imagined it would touch so many hearts. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing: doctors, students, and old friends from across the country calling to say, “We felt this one.”

But one call, in particular, stayed with me.

It was from a senior doctor, a woman I’ve always admired for her calm wisdom. Her voice was both warm and weary. “Dr. Biswajit,” she said, “thank you for writing the truth so beautifully. I’ve already shared it with my students.” There was a pause, and then her tone softened.

“You know, Doctor… today I feel sad. My young colleagues no longer see us as mentors. They see us as competitors. They think our experience can’t stand before the power of a machine or the glamour of the latest diagnostic tool. They are racing not toward excellence, but toward numbers. And in that race, they are losing something sacred.”

Her voice faltered

Her words pierced deeper than any scalpel could.

As she spoke, a memory from 2019 flashed before me. That was the year I said goodbye to the hospital I had served for 23 years; the department I helped build from the foundation up, had appointed a freshly passed-out doctor as a consultant, my equal, asking him to “compete” with me, not as a junior to be guided, but as a competitor to be measured against. '

It wasn’t the competition that hurt me. It was what it represented, the beginning of an illness in the soul of medicine itself.

That day, I walked out, not in anger, but in grief. Because I realized, the illness had entered the system itself.

Hospitals once felt like temples of healing.

Now, they are turning into markets of metrics.

Patients are becoming data points. Doctors, targets.

The art of medicine, the empathy, the mentorship, the humility, is being buried under layers of corporate ambition and government administrative control.

Young doctors are being shaped not by mentors, but by Investors. Their minds are trained to measure success in numbers, cases done, targets met, and income earned.

And behind those numbers stand powerful forces:

The corporate culture, pushing profit over purpose.

Administrators turning, healing into business models.

Policies diluting education for short-term statistics. Investors dictating how fast a patient should be “processed.”

Somewhere between these transactions, the spirit of mentorship died a quiet death.

But There Is Hope.

Medicine is not beyond healing. We can heal the culture of medicine.

We can still treat this sickness the same way we heal the human body, by addressing the root cause, not just the symptoms.

But the cure won’t come from machines, policies, or profits, it will come from people..

We can begin again from the medical schools, from the teaching wards, from the first touch of a stethoscope to remind every student that medicine is not a business; it is a blessing.

What the healthcare industry needs today is not another machine, not another hospital chain—but a movement to restore its soul.

A movement where mentorship replaces competition. Where conscience guides decisions. Where respect flows both ways—from senior to junior, and back. Where we don’t chase numbers, but nurture humanity.

The medical culture needs its own medicine—a return to humanity.

At No Prescription Point (NPP), we have begun this quiet revolution. We don’t write prescriptions; we change perceptions. We teach doctors and citizens alike that health is not a business—it’s a shared mission.

A Call to Every Doctor, Student, and Healer

If you’ve ever felt the fatigue of a system that values numbers over nobility. If you’ve ever missed the silent satisfaction of your mentor’s nod. If you’ve ever felt that medicine deserves to breathe again. Then this movement is for you.

Let’s rebuild a world where doctors don’t just treat diseases, they restore dignity. Let’s make mentorship sacred again. Let’s heal the healers.

Because the stethoscope was never designed to measure profit. It was designed to listen to pain, to silence, to the human soul.

And if we can listen again, truly listen, we can still hear the heartbeat of hope.

No Prescription Point — The Art of Self-Healthcare Global Self-Healthcare Education & Research (GSHER) Dr. Biswajit Mohapatra