Question: Roughly how many lives have you saved?

Viyaasan Mahalingasivam answered on 11 Jan 2022:

Good question! But impossible to answer I’m afraid!

I’ve always been a hospital doctor seeing patients who come in sick and it is very rewarding to be able to watch them get better and go home. What’s even more satisfying is that it’s always a team effort and we’re lucky to be able to call up on so much freely available expertise whenever needed. When people can’t be saved (and most of the time there is nothing that could have been done to stop this by the time they are in hospital), every month we discuss why and whether there’s anything we need to learn and improve in our systems to do better.

A less exciting but more important way of thinking about it (I believe) is how many patients we’ve been able to prevent from getting sick in the first place through decisions that are made years before. For example, by helping someone to stop smoking, starting them on blood pressure tablets, getting them vaccinated or helping them get proper housing. This is why it’s so important that everyone has strong access to preventative care from GPs and specialists as much as possible.