Dr H S Bedi, the head of cardiac surgery department at the Christian Medical College and Hospital, has one routine ritual to perform before he enters an operation theatre. He offers prayers and chants couplets from Japji Sahib before he begins a surgical procedure.

Call it their belief or their way of seeking success, almost all surgeons in hospitals across the region offer prayers as a routine every time before performing a surgery.

Doctors at the Dayanand Medical College and Hospital have evolved a routine ritual which is performed before every surgery. The whole team which works on a surgical procedure gets together and prays while a CD plays religious hymns like Gayatri Mantra and couplets from the Guru Granth Sahib.

“I think there is no distinction between science and God. All that science has taught us is something that has always existed in this world. We have only discovered them, like Newton discovered the law of gravity. The prayers are a way of focusing our mind on our objective so that we do not have a half hearted approach,” says cardiac surgeon at DMCH, Dr rajiv Gupta.

As for Dr Sarju Ralhan, senior cardiac surgeon, offering prayers make him do the impossible sometimes. “Even your hands move faster while conducting a surgery since at the back of your mind you know that there is a very thin line between life and death. We are mostly dealing with complicated cases and that leaves us in situations where we know the supernatural plays some role and saves our patients,” he says.

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