Toiling for hours at a stretch, executing commands leveled from all angles and wishing one could miraculously split into two, as work appear as endless heaps. Any mistakes could attract condescending remarks. This may be a familiar scene for many of our house officers on duty.

So young in their careers, yet disillusioned at such important formative years. Shaping a skewed and hardened mentality, that medicine is a cruel game. Many mature into their senior years bent on ensuring that their experiences should not be carried into future generations of doctors. Nevertheless, when the times do come, their earlier noble pledges evaporate, only to condensate as a mould of their much feared tormenters.

Are doctors a bunch of savagers waiting to devour their younglings? Has the profession not thought them about humulity and inevitable mortality for Man? Or has the elevated sense of pride and achievement gone to their heads?

It is only my hope that I, myself, should never spiral into this rapacious trap. But somehow, I fear that at times, it may just be too tempting to bark at a mistake that we may have made many times over in the past.

Perhaps we are all trapped in a cruel world after all.