"Whenever he had to communicate some sensitive news to the relatives/friends of the patient, he chose a spot that enabled him to run in case he is assaulted. A few minutes into the conversation, I realised that he was not even joking."
NIRMALKUMAR MOHANDOSS
The recent attack on a doctor on COVID duty in Assam has left the doctors fraternity agitated and depressed. The reason cited for the attack is ‘death of the COVID patient’, as absurd as it may sound. While several doctors have been fighting for the public against the deadly COVID, the news of relentless assault on their psyche is now a routine.
Just about a year ago reports & videos of angry locals in the Indore neighbourhood attacking and chasing away doctors, who had gone there to screen the residents for the novel Corona, petrified all people with conscience. This was only a couple of days after the Indore locals spat on doctors during such screening. Since then, such attacks have continued across the country.
As reports show that more than 1000 doctors treating COVID patients have succumbed to the virus in India, their fight against the pandemic continues to safeguard the public. As early in 2017, a study conducted by IMA revealed that nearly 75% of the doctors have faced violence on duty. Do doctors deserve such disrespect from the society?
A close look at a doctor’s life easily reveals the hardship they face in becoming one. A person takes a minimum of twelve years of medical school to become a super speciality doctor. In a country like India where there is a cut throat competition to get a post-graduate medical seat, many Under graduates take about a few years to prepare for their entrance tests alone sitting at home.
After all these years of hardship, most resident doctors and junior consultants work for laborious hours in tough environment. In almost all Government Hospitals & in most crowded/popular private hospitals, such residents and junior consultants are assigned ‘duty’ days every third or fourth working day. On such ‘duty’ days, a doctor is on duty for 24 hours and continues to work on the next working day. After losing much of their youthful days in medical schools and working so hard for such long hours, these doctors end up getting an income disproportionately lesser. Young surgeons spend several hours in 'life saving surgeries', often without rest only to move on with the next surgery.
Despite all these trying conditions in which they raise themselves to save the lives & health of the people, they are often received with contempt. In the late 2019, when doctors in Tamil Nadu took to streets demanding pay revision, 50 per cent service quota in post-graduate/super specialty courses and time bound promotions, among other things, they were met with severe criticism from the general public, particularly because doctors were “neglecting their duties towards the patients”. This was followed by issuance of charge-memos, transfer & posting orders against more than a hundred doctors in the State. Thankfully, the Madras High Court came to their rescue by quashing all such charge – memos and transfer orders but observed that:
“Doctors, like lawyers, forget the moral worth and dignity of patients and leave them in the lurch unmindful of the humanitarian consequences that ensue from their actions”.
The mere fact that failure of a doctor and a lawyer to perform their professional duty ends up in a humanitarian crisis justifies the necessary dignified & respectful treatment they are entitled to among the public. But is that how the patients/clients look at them?
More than a decade ago, my family got a first-hand experience of the dangerous circumstances the resident doctors work in. As a 23-year-old Casualty Medical Officer in a private medical college hospital at the outskirts of Pondicherry, the abuses and threats my brother received from patients' relatives made my parents very anxious and frightened at home. As the doctor in-charge of the hospital’s casualty, dealing with angry relatives of a patient brought dead or while explaining the lack of a bed was too difficult. We spent sleepless nights whenever he went on a night duty. Soon enough, he relieved us all from the mental pain by ‘resigning’, to prepare for his PG entrance tests. Interestingly, more than a decade later, when I spoke to my friend who is now a junior consultant in the very same hospital, he told me that the situation remains the same. He said whenever he had to communicate some sensitive news to the relatives/friends of the patient, he chose a spot that enabled him to run in case he is assaulted. A few minutes into the conversation, I realised that he was not even joking.
Just before writing this article, a surgeon from a busy private hospital lamented that though patients with severe health complications approach private hospitals citing better medical infrastructure, inability to save some of them is often met with curse. Even when most such complicated cases succeed and the patients are saved, after they are discharged, they go around telling others how the hospital was ‘unjustly expensive’ mindless of the nature of complication that was cured and the expertise & infrastructure that saved the life.
Amid all these trying factors, the doctors have shown exemplary character in fighting the pandemic by pledging their lives to save others. At a time when the medical health system is facing severe stress, several doctors have been providing free treatment/tele consultation to even non-COVID patients. However, in a country where people refuse to wear masks or get vaccinated citing quacks & Healers, what respect can the doctors expect in reciprocity?
Though there is a demand for a separate Union legislation to protect doctors against violence and most State legislations on the subject have failed to produce the desired results, the people in power are busy defending the efficacy of ‘cow-urine’ & other unscientific methods to treat COVID. While doctors fend for themselves, even self-declared God-men wage verbal & psychic war against the scientific minds.
Is it too much to expect any form of empathy towards the doctors?
(NIRMALKUMAR MOHANDOSS is an advocate at the Madras High Court.)
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