Recently, doctors have been at the receiving end of a lot of violence even as they work hard to treat patients and are many-a-times stretched to their limits while treating patients beyond their capacities.

The growing mistrust among patients, relatives and their treating doctors is emerging as the biggest challenge in the healthcare system, often putting doctors at loggerheads with these angry relatives, who hold doctors responsible for a patient's death. The mistrust leads to inefficient and costly treatments, where patients go through mental, emotional, financial and physical stress which often leads them to accuse doctors of negligence and being incompetent. But matters worsen when this causes humiliation and violence for doctors and their medical staff.

Considering this problem, the government had promulgated The Prevention of Violence Against Medicare Persons and Institutions Act.

However, local medical associations across India have scored a victory in their campaign for better implementation of the Medical Protection Act only after striking and conducting negotiations with the state governments. The state governments of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu agreed to educate their police forces about the provisions of the Act. The Government of Haryana promised similar action. The Act is now promulgated in nineteen states, but much remains undone on the ground.

A survey conducted by Indian Medical Association found that nearly 75% of the surveyed doctors have faced some form of violence at work.

In some particularly serious instances, a lady doctor in Tuticorin was attacked by the husband of a pregnant woman with a sword, and in another instance in Punjab, a similar referral of a boy to a tertiary hospital led to the burning of the doctor’s clinic.

Doctors and resident doctors in multiple states including Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh protested against a spate of attacks on their colleagues by relatives of patients. The strike was called off after the government assured them of security at their workplaces. However, this has not solved the problem for doctors, who still complain that the legal system is poorly equipped to handle such cases, and even more poorly equipped in handling cases where there are claims and counter-claims by both patients and doctors.

According to research published in the National Medical Journal of India..

Doctors often face harassment from patients’ relatives, and then when they seek legal recourse, police officers are many-a-times unaware of the existence of a protection act for them.

While the Act has been ratified in nearly nineteen states, police are still unaware of it as a special protective measure for medical personnel. The doctors’ complaints often lead to a counter complaint of medical negligence by patients and the cases drag on, leaving doctors in the lurch if their establishments have been attacked or damaged or if they have been physically assaulted by irate relatives.

Many senior doctors and residents have called for changes to this law. According to the study, most surveyed doctors noted that any violence on part of patients’ relatives should be grounds not to accept a complaint if there is evidence presented.

Although the proposed solution requires some debate, it is worth noting that many states have ratified the law, there is nearly no impact seen on the ground. In a study of legal cases filed under this Act in Punjab and Haryana, it was found that despite the ratification of this Act in 2010, only a handful of cases had reached courts until 2015.

In many cases, the primary requirement of an FIR was not fulfilled by the police, exposing how knowledge about the Act remains scarce in the legal system, especially in the most critical link in this chain, the police forces. Many instances of such violence have prompted strikes and then the courts chastising doctors for striking.

In 2017, Maharashtra’s Minister of State for Home (urban) Ranjit Patil assured the doctors that the legal system would be strengthened to handle such cases and officers would be sensitized. But, indicators from the ground point to the fact that despite having a law framed for doctors’ protection and court orders for hospitals to install security guards and precautionary measures to prevent such attacks, much remains undone, especially regarding implementation of rules and deterrence of such attacks.