While nothing better to do at my home I was going through this really old edition of this local magazine. the edition was interestingly a special feature edition on doctors and malpractice in Pakistan. 20 odd pages were full of text which told of stories from all the corners of the country about mishandling of patients by the doctors. I had some idea of the situation before coming across this text but after reading it I am a bit alarmed at the prevailing situation. Cases of neglect are not rare occurrences, as one might like to think, rather they seem to be an essential part and parcel of Pakistan doctor's daily practice.
Medicine is a respectable field. mainly because when a patient comes to a doctor he entrusts to him his most precious belonging that is his health. Nothing can be more important to a person of ordinary means or otherwise than his own good health. It is thus a doctor's moral as well as professional duty to respect this trust and help his patient in every way possible. A doctor should do everything and anything in his/her capacity to alleviate the suffering of all had who come and seek alleviation. All doctors are bound by their code of conduct and hippocritic oath to perform their duty to their best capabilities.
Then what is it that converts them from harbingers of good health to portals of death and destruction. Why such a contradiction in what they are supposed to do and what they actually do. Why are most of doctors in Pakistan bent upon blemishing the name of their profession for the sake of their own vested interests.
Well if we try to seek answers to these questions here this may take up pages of discussion and still more will remain out of black and white than will be covered by the printing capability of this machine, we call computer. To me some thing is more important than the rest. something that needs to be done right away if we want to see some change in the picture. something done urgently and honestly. And that is to try to inculcate these principles of moral ethics into doctors of future. While most can be done to set right all those doctors who do evil to mankind still better can come out of the plan of teaching future doctors not to side with that evil. If I can say with some authority and surety ethics as a subject has taken a back seat in our present curricula. Teachers don't want to teach and students don't want to learn, what is most important to any human being; good moral and ethical values. Well what can one expect from a nation of menials. If at all something is taught in this context it is redundant and out dated. Nothing practical.
Well serious discussion aside, I started to write this blog to quote from that text some interesting facts. so here it is
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Medicine is a respectable field. mainly because when a patient comes to a doctor he entrusts to him his most precious belonging that is his health. Nothing can be more important to a person of ordinary means or otherwise than his own good health. It is thus a doctor's moral as well as professional duty to respect this trust and help his patient in every way possible. A doctor should do everything and anything in his/her capacity to alleviate the suffering of all had who come and seek alleviation. All doctors are bound by their code of conduct and hippocritic oath to perform their duty to their best capabilities.
Then what is it that converts them from harbingers of good health to portals of death and destruction. Why such a contradiction in what they are supposed to do and what they actually do. Why are most of doctors in Pakistan bent upon blemishing the name of their profession for the sake of their own vested interests.
Well if we try to seek answers to these questions here this may take up pages of discussion and still more will remain out of black and white than will be covered by the printing capability of this machine, we call computer. To me some thing is more important than the rest. something that needs to be done right away if we want to see some change in the picture. something done urgently and honestly. And that is to try to inculcate these principles of moral ethics into doctors of future. While most can be done to set right all those doctors who do evil to mankind still better can come out of the plan of teaching future doctors not to side with that evil. If I can say with some authority and surety ethics as a subject has taken a back seat in our present curricula. Teachers don't want to teach and students don't want to learn, what is most important to any human being; good moral and ethical values. Well what can one expect from a nation of menials. If at all something is taught in this context it is redundant and out dated. Nothing practical.
Well serious discussion aside, I started to write this blog to quote from that text some interesting facts. so here it is
Medical mistakes are not a modern phenomenon, as most people may think. They have existed since Florence Nightingale's days! In 1959, she published the first study of hospital death rates in the world, in which she demonstrated that high death rates in large hospitals were preventable.
Following that , numerous such studies have been done, all showing that negligence has not abated.
It was once reported that in 1976 when doctors in Los Angeles went on a five-week strike, the weakly death rates in hospitals dropped below the normal. Once the strike ended, the death rates rose and stayed above the normal for several weeks!
In a 1985 experiment in Israel, an observer places at the patient's bedside to observe clinicians in the medical surgical intensive care unit of a university hospital found that clinicians made 544 errors over four months, or 1.7 errors a patient a day.
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