Doctors strike back

Like a raging wildfire, the medical fraternity across the length and breadth of the country has lent support to agitating doctors in West Bengal, seeking a Central legislation against hospital violence and attacks by infuriated attendants. Thousands of doctors went on a protest, even threatening to resign, if action is not taken against assaulters of a doctor at Kolkata’s NRS Medical College on June 10, after a patient’s death. The young doctor is in a critical condition. Instead of controlling the situation, CM Mamata Banerjee let it get out of hand by dismissing it as a BJP-CPM conspiracy. Even as many thousands of patients have been affected, the IMA’s call for a nationwide strike today will hit even larger numbers at government hospitals, including private establishments. The emergency services will, mercifully, continue to function normally.

There are no two ways about it. Violence against doctors trying to follow the best line of treatment for a patient is unacceptable. They may have a demi-god status in public eye, but they are no God. They work long, strenuous hours and may err, which may cause grave complications or even inadvertent death. But in those circumstances, too, law can’t be taken in one’s hands, no matter how grave the sense of loss. It is for a medical committee to examine cases of negligence and take suitable action, which may include debarring a doctor from practice. In some instances, stringent penal action has been meted out to medical practitioners and hospitals.

But again, doctors should not behave like trade unionists and hold health services to ransom. Also, all is not well within the sector. The recent suicide by a 23-year-old doctor at BYL Nair Hospital, Maharashtra, following derisory caste slur, and by a medico at Rohtak PGIMS, calls for introspection. Such spectacular display of strength and solidarity was missing in these cases. There is, indubitably, a trust deficit — worsened by commercialisation and privatisation of medicare. Fighting one another will do no good. Compassion and keeping the communication lines open will buttress a healthy relationship. Allow the healing to begin. It can’t be an adversarial doctor-patient rift. We forget they are one team.