Noting ugly development at RIMS Understanding Doc-Patient ties

Perhaps it is time for all go back to the classrooms and re-learn something as basic as the relationship that a patient shares with her doctor. This is of particular importance  for an institution as important and prominent as the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) which has unfortunately been in the news for all the wrong reasons of late. Take a look and it was not so long back that the institution hogged prime space in the newspapers and prime time in the local TV channels for reasons which no one would be proud of. If allegations raised by family members and patient parties are anything to go by, a woman admitted to the hospital with a fractured leg passed away soon after she was wheeled into the Operation Theatre. Now someone dying of complications arising out of a fractured leg is unthinkable, given the rapid strides that the medical science has made. Shortly later came the news of a person who had suffered a stroke being not attended to on the ground that the day was a ‘holiday’ ! And now the institute is embroiled in yet another unsavoury incident following the demise of a woman in a child delivery case and the death of a man who came to the hospital complaining of a pain in the shoulder. This much is known from the little information that The Sangai Express has received so far, but what is deeply worrying is  the reported outrage of family members and patient parties resulting in the assault of a doctor on duty as well as the manner in which the enraged family members and patient parties went on the rampage in the hospital. What is wrong ? And perhaps this is where the need for everyone to go back to their class arises. The relationship that a doctor shares with her patients is something very different from the ones shared between say an architect and her client or between a lawyer and her client. It is to the doctor that a patient feels obliged to tell everything, including intimate details of one’s personal life. There is something sacred in the relationship between a doctor and her patient and it is when due respect is not given to this sacredness that things can turn ugly. This is what has happened at RIMS now and time for everyone not to forget that the hospital is there to care for the sick and the dying and is a place to at least give a sense of dignity at the last stage of a man’s life. It is when this is forgotten, it is when patients and their family members forget that a hospital is there to treat and care the sick and the dying that things can take an ugly turn. It is also equally true that a doctor cannot afford to treat her patients like a lawyer would his or her clients. There is something ethereal in the doctor-patient ties and relationships and it is this sacredness that should be respected at all times.
Not surprisingly doctors and nurses have risen as one against the assault and it is in line with this that the Teachers’ and Medical Officers’ Association have resolved to shut down all services at RIMS including OPD, emergency, regular OT and PME till the culprits involved in assaulting the doctor are pulled up. The angst of the medical fraternity is understandable, but this is also the right time to seriously study the ties that bind a patient to his or her doctor. RIMS authority should give a serious thought on why family members and patient parties have time and again targeted doctors and other medical professionals whenever anything goes wrong with the patient being treated. Again it is also important to question why all should be penalised by the outburst of some and this is precisely the point that has been conveyed in the decision to suspend all services at RIMS hospital. Something, somewhere is terribly wrong and it is only right that some steps are taken to ensure that such an ugly incident is not repeated in the future. Doctors are not Gods, everyone knows this and perhaps it would help everyone for the men and women in white to acknowledge that treating a patient is something much more than just prescribing medicines and operating on a sick person. A little effort to show humaneness, a gesture to show ‘We care’ and a reciprocal response from the patient parties and family members can go a long way in underlining the sacredness in the doctor-patient ties and relationships.