Dr. Dilip Walke shares useful tips on how doctors and medical establishments can handle mob violence arising from unforeseen patient deaths.

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As the society evolves and the population becomes more literate, it is expected that vandalism against doctors and healthcare establishments would decline. It was believed that mob violence would commonly be seen in clinics and establishments in communally sensitive or politically sensitive areas, or in slums and industrial belts. However recent incidents show us that the culprits involved in such incidents are surprisingly well-educated and well-placed economically. There is a tendency to be intolerant towards any mishap occurring during medical procedure or surgery because of the following reasons:

1. Healthcare literacy is low in our country and success is taken for granted.
2. To an extent doctors are to be blamed for this. Never have we found doctors highlighting about possible complications during procedures and surgeries in the articles and talks given in the media. In the media, doctors usually take pride in advertising their successes in managing challenging cases and refrain from highlighting their failures which are part of the medical profession.
3. Media takes more interest in highlighting incidences of mishaps and complications and paint the doctors involved as culprits; because such news has more value in terms of sale and TRP. Media trails under the garb of freedom of journalists has affected not just the medical profession but many sections of the society.
4. The general public have an undesirable and immoral opinion about doctors and hospitals because they are aware about unethical practices like cut, undue, and unethical pharma sponsorship of doctors, and allegedly high billing by corporate hospitals.
5. Politicians find doctors as soft targets and hence during confrontations between doctors and general public, politicians always back the general public to please their vote bank.
6. The poor and underprivileged are frustrated because on one hand, they find that the government hospitals are unapproachable and lacking in basic facilities, and on other hand the private hospitals are too costly. The burden of serving them is therefore on small nursing homes. The small nursing homes hence get exposed to the frustration of a poor patient in case of a mishap.
7. Small nursing home owners are vulnerable because of lack of adequate security, insurance, adequate staff and adequate financial management. Such a setup often has only one doctor giving service. There is only one entry door and no provision for exit during mob attacks.
8. One also wonders whether doctors are victims of a general envy that the society has against them because they enjoy a certain social status in the society.