My father was a barefoot doctor

"Thousands of households leave footprints, and the medicine box is accompanied by the smell of earth", which is still the warmest memory of the "barefoot doctor" of that era.

Barefoot doctors are informal doctors in the countryside who are not included in the State establishment. To put it more colloquially, the villagers called the barefoot doctors who went down to the fields to cultivate the land barefoot.

From the beginning of the liberation of the mainland to the end of the 1980s, most of the villages had barefoot doctors. At that time, the country was poor and there was a shortage of medical experts, and it was impossible to train so many doctors with medical expertise for a while, only to train a group of barefoot doctors who knew a little about medicine to meet emergency needs. In the era of poverty and backwardness, there were many sick people, and it was even more necessary to treat barefoot doctors, so in that era, in the countryside, barefoot doctors came into being.

In the countryside, barefoot doctors are generally selected from the following two criteria. One is selected from the medical family, the other is selected from the middle and high school graduates who understand the pathology of medicine and disease, and then concentrated in the county health school for training for three months or a year and a half, and after graduation, they returned to the countryside to be considered barefoot doctors.

My father was a product of that era, that is, he went to the county hospital to study for three months, did not undergo systematic study, medicine, pathology, just came back from learning and serious diseases can not be cured, not to mention complex diseases. The problems he can solve are usually some minor diseases such as headaches, body heat, abrasions and trauma. Although it is a minor disease, it can be treated and solved, and it is also greatly convenient for the villagers. First, they do not have time to go to large hospitals to see doctors, second, it is very inconvenient to go to large hospitals to see doctors, and third, the cost of seeing doctors in large hospitals is high. Therefore, the villagers have great respect for the barefoot doctors, and they all think that they are the great intellectuals in the village and the saviors.

In fact, being a barefoot doctor in the countryside is very hard and not easy. First of all, barefoot doctors do not have a fixed salary, some just take some subsidies from the brigade every month, and some just use the production team to record work points in lieu of pay.

This meager subsidy and work share could not solve their lives at all, so they had to participate in the labor of the production team barefoot during the day and learn medical knowledge on their own at night. Secondly, due to poverty and backwardness, medical equipment is very rudimentary. Except for a medicine box, a few ordinary pills, a syringe, a few pieces of gauze, there are very few others. Such a simple device, for barefoot doctors, is sometimes "difficult for a smart woman to cook without rice".

Despite the hardships, my father dutifully served the villagers with enthusiasm.

Whether it is late at night or on a stormy day, as long as a patient is called, he will go to the doctor and will seriously take injections for the patient. If you can cure yourself, you will do your best to cure it. If you can't cure yourself, it is recommended to send it to the hospital for treatment, and sometimes you personally accompany it. The fee for his medical treatment is not high, and if he encounters difficult households and five insurance households, he will have to pay the cost fee backwards.

Although his father's medical skills are not high, his service attitude is particularly good. He often carried a red cross medicine box the size of an egg, wore a white coat, and went from house to house to visit the masses. Especially in the flu period or the brain flow period, the barefoot doctor's responsibility is greater and harder, he not only goes from house to house to distribute medicines, but also has to explain the knowledge of prevention, usually can not eat a meal a day, can not sleep once a stable sleep. The children in the village are afraid of needles, he will try his best to coax the children, or tell them stories, or sing for them, and sometimes even buy a candy for the children, when the children's attention is distracted, a needle falls, and before the child can cry "wow", the needle is pulled out again. In this way, the children of the village saw the barefoot doctor, both loving and afraid, and most of them shrank behind their mothers, stretched out their heads, and stared sheepishly at the red cross medicine box on their father's body, which contained both candy and syringe.

The ruler is shorter, the inch is longer. Although Dad's medical skills are not as smart as the doctors in the big hospitals, sometimes the doctors in the big hospitals can't cure the disease, but he can cure it. I remember a girl in the village who went up the mountain to collect firewood and accidentally sprained her hand. Her hand twisted very strangely, one hand up and one hand down, up can not be put down, down can not reach up, to the county hospital to see, the county hospital recommended to the regional hospital to see. The girl's parents had no money in their hands and were anxious to find her father. Dad was eating, saw the patient, put down the rice bowl, and looked up and down at the patient several times. After asking the cause of the disease, my father said that I could cure the disease. So the patient's mother took the patient's trouser belt away, put it on straw and tied it, and then locked the patient in a hidden house. About an hour later, the father carried a gong and led the patient's parents to the door of the hidden house. The barefoot doctor "" sounded the gong, then pushed open the door, and said well. When the patient's parents looked at their daughter, they were sure: their hands moved freely. It turned out that the girl's hand was sprained because she couldn't stand the pain and couldn't turn it back, and she couldn't be cured. The barefoot doctor's gong sounded, frightening the girl to reach for her pants, and she was cured. This is called the girl's family's treatment of not being ashamed and not being painful.

In the eyes of the townspeople, the father's treatment of the disease was indeed high. But sometimes, it's out of par. I remember when I was a child, there was a swollen and painful ear, my father touched it with his hand, took a picture with a flashlight, said it was otitis media, and poured a potion into my ear, and said that it would be good to wash it twice. Unexpectedly, as soon as this potion was poured in, my ears became even more swollen and painful. Wash once and again, until I can't stand it, my father is embarrassed to say: Go to the county hospital to see the five senses! My mother took me to the five senses department to have a look, and the doctor laughed and said, you little guy, how to plant bean sprouts in your ear sockets! After the doctor finished speaking, he used the clip to clip out the bean sprouts in the ear socket, and my ears were comfortable. It turned out that I was playing in the bean stack, and a soybean ran in, and on an itch, I dug it, and the barefoot doctor poured a potion, and the bean sprouts grew inside. It's no wonder the barefoot doctor in the village, because there was no reflective lighting, he couldn't see the bean sprouts in my ears.

In any case, in that poor and backward era, my father made great contributions to the masses of the people. With the progress of society and the development of science and technology education, hospitals have been established in the countryside now, doctors are standardized, barefoot doctors, and gradually replaced by graduates of medical universities. This is another step forward in human civilization.