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Rise in attacks on doctors

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The increasing instances of attacks on doctors have more to do with systemic failure over a period of time rather than any recent stray incident. Violence can never be justified, least of all against someone who is ostensibly attempting to save a person’s life. The number of incidents of attacks on doctors and other healthcare workers across the country has risen sharply over the last few years. In medicine there are no guarantees and patients can develop complications despite the best efforts of the doctors but someone who has been told to expect a good result can be angry if the outcome is unfavourable. The threat of violence though condemnable and unacceptable, in today’s scenario, is enabling patients to get better healthcare. But with inadequate health budgets, there is a crunch in resources, staff and medicines as far as the patient is concerned. The state has also to reduce the load on medical staff and improve services in its hospitals. In government hospitals, doctors are overworked and under pressure from politicians who can interfere with medical admission, affecting their self-esteem. The main reasons for patients’ relatives to become violent are doctors unwillingly practise unethically, such as advising expensive unnecessary radiology, endoscopic, or laboratory investigations ,delay in attending patient, request of advance payments, or withholding a deceased body until settlement of final billing. Medication, forces doctors to ask patients to buy medicines from outside, which only makes them suspicious in the eyes of the patients. One major issue is the low healthcare literacy among the general public.

(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)

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