Village doctor Pan Ying: No regrets on the road to her dream
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????Pan Ying takes a villager's blood pressure. Photo by Sun Hongtao
In Nantai Village, Qinghe District, Tieling City, Liaoning Province, a woman can be seen every day carrying a heavy medicine box, either walking or riding along the country paths. Her name is Pan Ying, and she is a local village doctor.
In 2004, 24-year-old Pan Ying returned to her hometown to become a village doctor after graduating from Dalian Medical University. Over the past 12 years, she has served her fellow villagers with dedication; with good medical skills, a good heart, and an easygoing manner, villagers from far and near are all willing to come to her for treatment.
Pan Ying's hands are congenitally deformed, and she has been certified as having a level-four physical disability. The pain in her body accompanied her throughout her upbringing, and also helped her achieve her dream of becoming a doctor.
After being admitted to Dalian Medical University, Pan Ying made a decision after graduation that would shape her entire life: she gave up the chance to work in the city and returned to her hometown to become a village doctor, beginning a path of treating patients from household to household. At that time, the village had no formally trained doctor, and as soon as relatives and neighbors heard that she was a university graduate who had studied medicine, they came to her for treatment one after another. During holidays, she was treating villagers almost every day, and she deeply felt the countryside's need for doctors.
Pan Ying is left-handed. Her teacher told her that if she went to the countryside to work as a village doctor, she would need to learn injections and nursing, and she would have to make her right hand even more skilled than her left. Pan Ying, who was already disabled, faced yet another difficult obstacle on the road to her dream. But she had a spirit that refused to give in, and ultimately overcame the difficulty, mastering the technique of giving injections with her right hand.
On the road to her dream, she was undoubtedly fortunate. A belief, a bit of persistence, and her family's encouragement enabled her to realize her dream. But at the same time, on the road to realizing that dream, she was also unfortunate: the defects in her hands made her put in more effort and sweat than ordinary people, and she also had to endure others' questioning. When she first became a doctor, patients would often see her disabled hands and ask, "How are you at giving injections? Can you do it?" To such doubts, Pan Ying always just smiled with pursed lips and responded with good medical skills. As time went on, villagers from her own village and even neighboring villages all gave this young woman a thumbs-up.
Pan Ying told reporters that she makes nearly 10 house calls on average every day. When she first became a village doctor, the village roads were not easy to travel, so to make it easier to treat villagers, Pan Ying deliberately bought a bicycle. Over 12 years, she wore out 2 bicycles and 1 electric bike.
Pan Ying's reputation grew, and villagers from neighboring villages often asked her to make house calls. On a winter night in 2011, Pan Ying suddenly received a call for help from a villager in the neighboring Shibadao Village. She immediately shouldered her medicine box, grabbed a flashlight, and hurried over. From the clinic to Shibadao Village was more than 5 li, and there was still snow on the road at the time. She slipped and fell countless times, but somehow stumbled her way to the patient's home. After diagnosis, the villager was found to have cholecystitis. She stayed at the patient's home until dawn and only left after the patient's condition improved.
Cui Yulin, a 73-year-old man in Nantai Village, is disabled and his family is especially poor. Since she returned to the village to practice medicine 12 years ago, Cui Yulin has been on Pan Ying's mind. The old man knows Pan Ying's phone number by heart. Whenever he has difficulties, Pan Ying comes as soon as she is called. Not only does she visit regularly to take his blood pressure, perform checkups, and deliver medicine, but she also chats with him. When it comes to Pan Ying, Cui Yulin has endless things to say: "Pan Ying takes special care of me. Over the years, whenever anything big or small happened at home, I would call her. I am grateful to her from the bottom of my heart."
If anyone in any household has a patient, with just one phone call, no matter what the weather is like, she will rush over at once. When she encounters those who are short of money, she even pays for their medicine, or even treats them for free. Six years ago, villager Ning Shuyun went into psychiatric shock. Pan Ying arrived at once, gave her an injection of a cardiac stimulant, saved her life, and did not charge a single cent for medical fees.
A few years ago, Pan Ying opened a pharmacy at the entrance to the village. The location is good, with many villagers living nearby, and it is also convenient for making house calls. She finally had a relatively fixed workplace. But villagers generally have low incomes and often have no money to buy medicine when they get sick. For such patients, even when Pan Ying knows they cannot repay the medicine fees, she still treats them and gives them medicine all the same.
In the eyes of the villagers, Pan Ying has both excellent medical skills and medical ethics. But she feels guilty toward her family, especially as a daughter, because she cannot devote herself fully to caring for her parents. Sometimes, while she is looking after her sick parents, as soon as she receives a call from a patient, she immediately picks up her medicine box and hurries off...
For 12 years, she has made house calls almost every day, and has never had a single day off.