Attack on doctors: Worst animal instincts

Last fortnight the country witnessed widespread protests by doctors against violent attacks. It can only be termed animal behaviour when anyone attacks doctors. Even animals usually do not attack until and unless provoked. How can human beings behave like provoked ferocious animals is surely something for behavioural scientists to worry about. Reason simply cannot explain it.

By the very nature of their work, the doctors are trying their best to make the present status of a patient better. All the doctors are noble souls and work with the best intentions. There are, of course, a few black sheep who bring bad name to the medical profession. We can leave them at the moment and let the legal, administrative, self-regulating, and governing mechanisms to rein them in. The sizeable number of doctors, who are true to their profession, is always willing to work for the persons in need of medical care. There may be moments of clashing egos of high profile patients or attendants or both with doctors; certain level of medical negligence – slight, moderate, or gross; lack of care; avoidable delay in attending to an emergency; lack of supporting staff; unavailability of proper resources; etc., and there may be unintended consequences. For all these, or most of these reasons, the reflex action of the attendants is resorting to the worst animal instincts. This is not acceptable at all.

It is undoubtedly within the ambit of the governance of any province or the country to provide safe environment – including physical infrastructure – to the medical professionals. How can the doctors work to the best of their ability when they are not sure about their own safety? Taking an extreme example – from the world of sports or movies, which definitely does not compare with the functioning of a medical professional – one can easily understand that a good tennis player or cricket player or an actor on the stage can never perform when he or she is constantly worried about his or her security and safety. The doctors, particularly the resident doctors, work for gruelling long hours, and are still expected to be working to the highest standards of alertness, expertise, professionalism, must complete all the associated paperwork – often taking away a lot of precious time – and that too with a smiling face and talking to patients and attendants in soft tone and sweet voice.

This is a little bit too much to expect from the already stretched and stressed doctors. Resident doctors often have 72 hours of continuous duty and cannot leave until and unless the next person on duty has reported. Most of them are paid meagre salaries, nowhere comparable to what young management professionals, lawyers, engineers, chartered accountants and others command in the society. The remuneration is so little that it may merely suffice as a sum for subsistence. The uncertainty for junior doctors for their professional future is extremely high, thanks to very high levels of super-specialisation required to survive and thrive in the profession. The going is pretty tough and it is quite normal for any human being to become restless, anxious and mercurial at times.

Without understanding the role the doctors play in the society, there are brainless persons – worse than wild animals in their intention, expression and action – who turn violent and refuse to accept the facts and just do not appreciate the efforts put in by the doctors. Such persons cannot be allowed to come anywhere near the doctor and the hospital. Proper screening should be done so that wrong-intentioned persons are not allowed to enter the hospital premises. Just like airport security, some filtering mechanism has to be created, however, there is a caveat – hospitals are the places where patients have to be taken in and attendants will join in emergency situations, and any delay due to screening at the entrance may be detrimental.

The author is a professor at IIM-A 
akagarwal@iima.ac.in