Doctor Patient Conflict

  In the past several decades, the relationship between patients and doctors has become worse, from mutually trustful relationship to quarrels, violence and even malignant attacks. Recently, a survey with 252,000 people investigated the trustfulness of patients in doctors. Surprisingly, 66.8 percent of the respondents distrusted the diagnosis and treatment from their doctors, which shows that doctor-patient relationship is aggravating. Thus, who should be responsible for this deteriorating relationship, doctors, patients or anyone else? Considering this social concern, government, doctors and patients should share the blame together.

  The government shoulders most of the responsibility in that it fails to provide balanced distribution of resources. For example, more than two thirds superb hospitals locate in big cities whereas there are only ill-equipped hospitals or even barefoot doctors in small town and villages; in the meantime, patients suffering from serious diseases are willing to see a doctor in well-equipped hospitals. Here comes a conflict that the limited number of doctors in urban areas is not proportionate to the mounting number of patients. Thus the time that each doctor spares on each patient becomes less and less. Considering less treatment and communication, patients and their relatives are not able to get whole comprehension of diseases that bother the sick, leading to an exacerbating misunderstanding between doctors and patients. Given all these observations, authorities that focus less on the resources allocation play an essential part in the doctor-patient relationship.

  While the distribution of medical resources takes up one reason, the irresponsibility of doctors should not be ignored. After graduating from different kinds of universities and colleges, students receive different levels of medical education as well as professional ethics and then engaged in hospital work. For example, in Anhui Province, a four-year-old boy died because his doctor carelessly prescribed a totally wrong drug and the chemist did not examine the prescription seriously. It is their imprudent ethics that caused the boy’s death. His parents’ argument and claim for compensation should go without saying. Were the doctors a little bit more careful, the tragedy would not happen. However, such kind of phenomenon is not rare in daily life. Thereby professional ethics should take over a large share on the exacerbation of doctor-patient conflict.