Certainty and uncertainty of death : Doctor-patient relationship
- Sangai Express Editorial :: September 26, 2013 -

In as much as death is a certainty, it is equally uncertain when death will knock at one’s doors.

In as much as the men in white, the doctors, are life savers by professions, they may be labelled or accused as killers with or without any basis.

The irony of life and death.

It is not very often, but again not very uncommon, for people to accuse doctors and those in the medical profession of negligence leading to deaths and Manipur has been witnessing such uproars from time to time.

Again it is not rare for family members and patient parties to go on the rampage and defile the very sanctity of a place like a hospital under the belief that the death of the patient could have been avoided, if only the doctors on duty had dispensed their duty with the commitment it required.

Placing doctors on the pedestal of Gods and painting them as devils when something unfortunate happens.

There can be no black and white answer to why this happens, but it is a reality, a worrying reality and perhaps it would help to understand the dynamics that relates a patient to his or her doctor.

Yes, doctors are not Gods, they are all human beings, fundamentally nothing different from the patients under their care.

Yet at the same time it also stands true that down the years, arrogance has come to be associated with doctors.

A thought borne out of misconceptions on the part of the patients and their family members or is there something concrete here ?

Hard to say and it is here that it becomes important to understand and try to define the relationship that a doctor shares with his or her patient.

The relationship that a doctor shares with his or her patient is something which cannot be equated with the relationship than an architect or a lawyer shares with his clients.

It goes much deeper than this.

Personal details, which otherwise would remain strictly in the domain of privacy are openly discussed between the doctors and the patients, underlining the point that it is not only a question of administering or prescribing the treatment procedure, but also about the trust that is shared between the sick and ailing and the doctors.

Perhaps it is the failure to keep this in mind that often leads to a stand off between doctors and family members in the event of something going wrong.

A failure on the part of the family members/patient parties to realise that doctors are also humans and can commit mistakes or failure on the part of the doctors to carefully explain the intricacies of the treatment procedures to all concerned ?

Without pointing any accusing fingers at the doctors, it may not be altogether wrong to say that in many cases, they fail to convey the message that the subject of their profession are humans and not some inanimate objects.

A doctor treating a patient is something far removed from an Engineer supervising and working at the construction sites.

It is something very different from an Architect designing the lay out of a building or a shopping mall.

Likewise, patient parties or family members too need to realise that there is the need to reciprocate the care and commitment of the doctor while discharging his or her duties.

The communication gap has to be removed. Trust deficit can be dangerous and undesirable, more so when it comes to the relationship between a doctor and his or her patients.

How far or how seriously have the people, cutting across all sections, given a thought to this is an open question.

More importantly how seriously do doctors ponder over this question or point is also a matter of debate, especially in the backdrop of the stand offs seen between patient parties/family members and the medical fraternity when anything unfortunate happens.

Cannot yet say this has become a trend, but some serious thoughts ought to be given to this lest it becomes a trend.