“The Doctor Killed
Him!”
Prof Maj S Bakhtiar Choudhary (Retd)
Just think once,
Are we attacking the pilot for delaying the flight?
Is aviation minister penalized for an air crash?
Are we assaulting Municipal offices for Air pollution?
Are we penalizing electricity board for cutting down the roadside trees?
These questions can go on….
Is doctor a Murderer?
The title seemed to pop out of the newspaper. Would
have been better suited in a Robin Cook medical thriller, I thought wearily. In
my 35 years of practice as a Medical Doctor, having served from the Armed
Forces to private national hospital chains like Apollo, to regional consulting
diagnostic centres like Elbit, Vijaya and Tenet, I have yet to come across a
doctor who was in the medical profession to willingly take a life (Not to
mention quacks, who don’t get appointed in respectable hospitals). Then why do
these headlines scream ‘doctor is the murderer’ from the pages of social media
every so often, as if it was the spoiler of a movie? Of course, the TRP ratings
go up, just like the ‘likes’ to a post of a crime thriller. Why else would our
media fan this fire?
Today media is repeatedly
showing doctor is being beaten-up by patient’s attendants. Like how people
learn things from movies, common man is learning that doctor can be made
responsible for not saving life of a person. The result is assault on doctors
on duty. Perhaps media is also not realizing their coverage could lead to more
irresponsible and foolish behavior.
Doctor is trained to save people
Given the right facilities and the right
faculties of mind (unless doctor has become crazy), no doctor would ever kill a
patient simply because he is trained to do exactly the opposite-try and save
the life! A doctor trains for almost a decade, with sometimes pitifully small
remuneration (in the early years of the training), to physically and mentally
exhausting working conditions, just because they believe that this is their
purpose-to save lives and give patients best chance to live a healthy life. If
they are unable to save a life, whose job is it to find out whether it was a
mistake of the doctor or not? Not of the people who sometimes, in a fit of
frenzy, go after the ‘life-saver’ themselves, as if blaming the death on the
doctor and beating him with their own hands is going to bring back the dead.
Revenge only leads to greater misery.
Why people behave foolishly?
Sometimes people behave foolishly! Especially
the patient’s attendants! They believe beating the doctors is the ultimate
solution. For even one second, they don’t think what a grave sin it is to
punish the healer. For them, the healer is not God, just a human being. Taking
the same argument further, if doctor is human then how can he save all the
lives? There are some terminally ill patients who can be saved only by a
miracle, not a human doctor. There are babies whose lives are yet so fragile,
that saving all babies is impossible. There are such diseases which medical
science is yet to understand fully. Statistics or data of any hospital, even
the best hospitals in the developed nations in the world will reveal that all
lives cannot be saved. Sometimes a mere blood clot can travel and get lodged in
a place where it causes a stroke. This in spite of giving blood thinners. There
are many such examples.
I welcome those attendants of patients to talk
to me or any other doctor, who will patiently explain the no. of things that
could go wrong in the human body. I wish doctors would pay more attention to
patients’ attendants than they usually do. These attendants are also the
sufferers, not just the patients. When a patient is lying on the hospital bed
comatose or under influence of drugs, it is the care-givers waiting outside who
are suffering the brunt of the situation. They need to be explained tactfully
the seriousness of the patient. It’s
better not to give unrealistic hopes.
If the same doctor is busy, the doctor
can delegate this task to another doctor. As per research, female doctors are
better at this. Their motherly instinct takes over and they are known to give
more time to patients and their care-givers than the male doctors. This known
fact can be utilized by all doctors. Instead, sometimes doctors speak against
their colleagues, which further damages the safety of the entire medical
fraternity.
Doctors who handle emergencies and are
on night duties are at high risk for attacks. It is better to prevent heated
discussions with attendants by assigning a female doctor or an experienced
female nurse to talk to them patiently. More than 2 attendants should not be
entertained inside the hospital room. Entertaining unrelated people who
accompany the patient can create trouble; hence should be discouraged. Some
alleged incidents happen in private hospitals perhaps due to marketing strategy
and management demands but not because of doctors. Unfortunately, the savior becomes the scape-goat.
Doctors do no possess magical powers
First thing we must understand that Lord
Krishna, Rama, Pope, Shankaracharya, NTR, Jayalalithaa and many have died and
doctors or priests could not save them. Media should make people understand
that doctors are human beings and do not possess magical powers. Instead people
have learnt that doctor should save every life. Media should refrain from
showing these incidents to increase their TRP rating. Those incidents
should be handled independently without major publicity.
Disease patterns have changed over the years and
accurate diagnosis is not always possible, Supreme Court has given guidelines
that doctor cannot be penalised for not diagnosing accurately. Differential
diagnosis and impressions on possible diagnosis are also valid. Pharma industry
is not under the control of doctors. They cannot control the molecules which
replace the older ones often. Media has the power and widespread coverage to
explain this to the common man. Such an article should be printed along with
the article reporting the beatings, not on another page, another day alone.
Political leaders should avoid following every case to
make their importance in public. They don’t understand the anguish and careful
attempts of a doctor and the pathos of an attendant. In case of alleged
negligence, a case can be filed in a manner prescribed by law, in extreme
situations.
Citizens should take care of their health with
pro-active approach. Today majority of Indians are after money neglecting their
bodies, I see many youth who visit me with severe disc disease due to sheer
negligence and they expect the doctor to save them miraculously from surgery
within no time. Doctors are humans. They have spent money and time to study for
many years. More than 85% of doctors do not make enough money when compared to
their counterparts; they have sacrificed so many nights in attending
emergencies, they need peoples’ support and gentle understanding of their
occupational needs..
