- It is universally acknowledged that the relationship between the doctors and patients is not only considered most sanctimonious but also largely based on mutual trust where the former is always held in high regard. As you are aware, such gratuitous acceptance is based on the fact that doctors alone are considered next to the almighty for the sheer power of the acquired knowledge in daringly undertaking life-saving endeavors. No disputing this fact as doctors alone possess the skills and wherewithal to save human lives during times of challenging medical emergencies.
PC: Craig Turp-Balazs
- Thus, when such a harmonious relationship encounters undercurrents of distrust owing to circumstances beyond anyone’s comprehension, the long-held mutual respect dissipates leading to discords and conflicts. As you are aware, several cases of people indulging in skirmishes, fights, and even riots when a patient passes away despite sincere attempts by doctors concerned about reviving are on the rise across the country. A recent incident in Dausa, Rajasthan resulted in a gynecologist’s tragic suicide after the police booked her for murder over a pregnant woman dying during childbirth.
- Similarly, the severe assault on two Howrah district doctors in West Bengal after a patient with acute kidney disease died revealed a broken system requiring immediate addressing. As reported, Dausa’s police chief was shunted out for the careless murder charge meant to placate the dead patient’s protesting relatives. These confrontations are a relatively recent phenomenon with both doctors and patients’ kin demanding justice when such incidents occur placing the onus on the police to proceed with caution and ensure public order until medical experts deliver a conclusive opinion.
PC: Amir Mateen
- NCRB data indicates 552 cases of medical negligence between 2018 and 2020. However, given patchy healthcare coverage that hurts poor people and rural India disproportionately, the actual incidence of medical negligence and deaths avertable with nearer-to-home healthcare facilities would be significantly higher. Mind you, there’s no palpable accountability for such governance failures either. It gets further exacerbated with decrepit government hospitals and hefty monetary demands of private hospitals leaving the average low-income Indian citizen in no-man’s land. Thus, it may partially explain the periodic outbursts of violence. To compound the matter, due process and procedure are still evolving, decades after independence.
- This is where the National Medical Commission should fine-tune its earlier guidelines in conjunction with the state/local police to ensure procedures laid out vis-à-vis medical negligence criminal complaints are addressed diligently. High-pressure jobs of doctors are adequately protected by eighteen states having a special law prescribing three years imprisonment for assaults even as the amended Epidemic Diseases Act prescribes harsher punishment. Sadly, police are failing to ensure deterrence. Meanwhile, NMC Act allowing appeals from doctors but not patients to the national-level Ethics and Medical Registration Board against state medical council decisions aggravates patients’ disenchantment. Therefore, for doctors’ professional well-being and to deter medical negligence, let’s have even-handed rules, and better public health facilities.
