Profile of Dr. Sohail Ahmed Almani by Sarah Aslam

Sarah Aslam MA previous Roll no 48 Profile

Profile of Dr. Sohail Ahmed Almani

By Sarah Aslam

“The presence of the doctor is the beginning of the cure”

A lot of people may be familiar with the phrase that “A doctor should be of such nature that ninety percent of the disease is cured just by looking at him”, Dr Suhail Ahmed Almani is that kind of doctor, whose friendly demeanor is just the right amount of medicine for every patient. The best parts of his nature includes his warm smile that makes you feel at ease, his cooperativeness exudes from every inch of his personality and his way of treating people is effortlessly casual with a slight touch of much needed humorous remarks.

Dr. Suhail Ahmed Almani currently works in Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences (LUMHS) as a professor of medicine, head of department of Medicine as well as director post-graduate. He is working as a professor since the year 2007. He is a general physician and runs a clinic in the evening.

 His schedule is quite heavily loaded; the work includes giving lectures to undergraduates, post-graduates, running rounds in Hyderabad and Jamshoro hospital, conducting examinations of undergraduates and post-graduates and doing official assignments of the university. The responsibilities of being a director post-graduate include monitoring the whole post-graduate setup; management of the admissions, assuring the regularity, punctuality of the students, which the Doctor termed as a “huge workload”.

On what aims to accomplish in his work, he said he wants to see the betterment of the university which is not what is happening right now, there are different reasons for this; political involvement and other issues that are moving all of the institutions backwards. Conditions are declining instead of going up.

On how he got himself in LUMHS, he said, “I did my graduation from here. I joined LUMHS as an assistant professor and I was trained here as well”. After his post-graduation, he became an assistant professor after passing his commission through the Sindh government. That’s where his journey started in the teaching cadre. Then he became an associate professor. He became a registrar in the ward for about 5 years then inducted in post-graduation and then he said, “We have the one and only option to apply for a senior post” but now times have changed, the university has its own selection board and has no connection with commission whatsoever.

He hesitated a bit telling about his early life as he could not remember it very well; he grew up in Hyderabad city, but belongs to a small village in District Tando Allahyar. He did his Intermediate from Government College Hyderabad while he studies sixth and seventh standard from Larkana. About the Education quality he said, “It was just adequate.”

His inspiration and motivation is accredited to his parents. “My parents wanted me to become a doctor, because at that time the mindset was quite typical that everybody needs a doctor in their home”, he said. His Father-in-law was also a doctor, it was much of what he was as a human, he was a good person and he earned respect due to his work and his good behavior towards not only his patients but to everyone around him. “That really pushed me to become a good human along with being a good doctor”, he gushed.

He emphasizes that hard work pays off once you are passionate about your work; there are numerous experiences in his life that have shaped him into a person into who he is right now. He has been heavily involved in research work and papers, around 50 research papers are accredited to him, which is a very hard task and a lengthy process.

Dr. Suhail Almani is currently working on a project about which he said, “I am developing a book right now on Internal medicine, which will be ready to be published by the end of this year, in December.” One of his associate professors is helping him with the typing of the material otherwise it is solely his own contribution. Internal medicine is a short review book, he has worked on this for a number of years but now the fruit is finally starting to mature. To write and organize it is a very challenging task.

On the compilation of the book’s contents, he said that, “I am a senior professor of medicine, I have worked all of my life practically and teaching the subject, I have seen each and every process with my own eyes.” The main source of learning is case-to-case learning, a scenario or topic in mind and developing an option through cases and patient’s condition.

He has been working on this for 1 year and started the idea for writing this book to help the future students, junior colleagues, beginners and the people involved in the medical field. This is the first book on Internal medicine from LUMHS developed by Dr. Suhail Almani.

Time management is a challenge he has yet to overcome. There is work load from the university side and he has to run the clinic in the evening.

So, what makes his medical book better than the others? “It’s a short book”, he said. Other textbooks are too long to read and consume too much time.

He has a bone to pick with the new generation. He criticized the youth by saying that the work is still managed by the people of the old times. The trend has changed, a number of university students working in the unit look for a shortcut to success and they only take this profession for the purpose of earning money, they have no interest in the work ethic or responsibilities of being a doctor or to do good for anybody. The work is based on lies and indulgent behavior of the youth. In short they lack passion and heart for the subject. But it is hard to ignite passion in the robots.

On the problems of the upcoming young doctors and foreign graduates he said that there are two basic institutions, one is regularity and the other is monitoring. PMDC (Pakistan medical and dental council) is a regularity institution, all of the colleges and universities follow their rules and regulations. Hec is a monitoring institute that validates the foreign degrees of the students; some overseas universities are recognized, the registration of the candidates is done very soon. Some countries are still not recognized so those students have to give another exam on undergraduate or post-graduate level, sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s difficult. It all depends on the recognition by PMDC.

On the topic of hardships faced by him in his professional life, he stated the issue favoritism in the senior posts of the university.

About how he manages his personal and professional life, He laughed and glanced over his wife who was sitting next to him, he said “There is no balance at all, which is why I get in trouble when I get home!”

Both Dr Suhail Almani and his wife, who is a Psychiatrist, agreed that mutual understanding is the key to a health relationship.

Dr. Rafia Suhail praised Dr. Almani and said, “He is a loving, caring and an ideal husband and father and equally committed to his work”.

The two daughters, out of which, one is doing BBA while the other is preparing for the entry test into the medical field, both complained that we don’t get enough time to meet our father. The doctor said that he arranges foreign trips once in a year for a family together and that is how he satisfies his family.