‘Everyone is waiting in line to die after birth, and there is one man who has been there to keep order. He finds out those who want to jump the queue and makes them keep in their own line. The aforementioned man who keeps turning people back at the door of ghost is called doctor.’
Lately there have been fruits, snacks, drinks and flowers sent to Beijing Minhang Hospital constantly by take-away deliveryman, which was spontaneously sent by people from all over our country to pay tribute to Dr.Yang and comfort to the staff in the hospital. Wen Yang, an excellent doctor who graduated from Peking University and was unanimously praised as a gentle, patient and responsible doctor, was killed by his patient’s family members a few days ago.
According to the description of Dr. Yang’s colleague, during the treatment, the patient’s family members repeatedly refused to accept the examination and treatment, insulted and threatened the medical staff, and finally even took the cruel way of cutting Dr. Yang’s throat to deprive his life. ‘The sun is still up’, the colleague said at the end, ‘but I still feel cold and Wen Yang had no chance to feel.’
On the third day after Yang’s death, the National People’s Congress voted to pass the fundamental and comprehensive law on basic medical and health care. The law will come into force on June 1st this year, reflecting the country’s concern for ‘medical trouble’ and the attention and care given to medical groups, which regulates disturbing medical and health institutions order, threatening or endangering medical staff personal safety, infringing medical and health personnel dignity, illegal collecting, using, processing and transmitting others’ health information, buying, selling, providing or publicizing others’ health information, be crime and the actors shall bear punishment. Many netizen forwarded the relevant reports, and said this law means that‘medical trouble’ is stipulated as crime officially.
Actually, the legislation has been about‘medical trouble’, before the launching about fundamental and comprehensive law on basic medical and health care, once the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Public Police issued ‘notice about maintaining medical institution order’ in 2012, and ‘the opinions on punishing illegal acts or criminal acts medically to maintain normal medical order’ was jointly issued by the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and the Departments of the State Council in 2014. These two laws summarize six major ‘medical trouble’ behaviors.
1. Illegally restricting the personal freedom of medical person or beating them in medical institutions, or even deliberately injuring or killing them;
2. To set up private mourning halls, lay wreaths, burn paper money, hang banners, block doors or disturb medical order in medical institutions;
3. Illegal parking of dead bodies in wards, first-aid rooms, intensive care units and another place of medical institutions to affect medical order;
4. Intentionally damage, steal or seize public or private property in medical institutions;
5. Openly insult and intimidate medical person;
6. Illegally carrying guns, ammunition, controlled instruments or explosive, radioactive, toxic or corrosive articles into medical institutions.
Making the above behaviour, or instigating others or in the name of a commission to implement related medical illegal and criminal behavior shall be dishonest person who cause serious damage to normal medical order. The aforementioned person shall be subject to varying degrees of restrictions on their lives, employment and access to preferential state polices, according to 16 joint disciplinary measures implemented by 28 government departments. For details, please refer to our historical article‘enough credit for swiping’, here we will not go into details.
At the same time, according to the notice and the opinions, if you commit any of the above acts, you may be given a warning, a fine and an administrative detention of not less than 5 days and not more than 15 days according to the law on punishment for public security administration.If serious consequences are caused, you may be convicted of murder and intentional injury, stir-up-trouble crime, the crime of organizing a mob to disturb public order, damage to property, insult, carrying guns, ammunition, knives, dangerous goods illegally, which endanger public security, so you may be sentenced to public surveillance, criminal detention or fixed-term imprisonment, life imprisonment and even death penalty.
In 2013, Huang from Liwan, Guangzhou, who was dissatisfied because his wife had given birth to a dead baby in a hospital, threw ‘ghost paper’ and hung banners at the gate of the hospital with more than 100 so-called ‘relatives’. The Liwan People’s Court sentenced Huang to two years and one month in prison for gathering people to disturb public order. Huang’s experience of losing his beloved son makes people sympathize with him, but his extreme behavior has seriously disturbed the order of the hospital and affected the interests of other patients to seek medical treatment, so he shall bear punishment. In this case, the most pitiful one is Huang’ s wife, who needs husband’s company and comfort because her fetus died, but Huang can not accompany and also shall compensate the hospital and the victim’s loss, making this family’s situation worse.
The era of making trouble willingly must come to an end. What we need is a legitimate, fair and humane doctor-patient dispute settlement mechanism.
In fact, doctor-patient disputes reflects that patients distrust hospital authority and public institutions. When facing their own or lovers and families life and health, the patient and family are easier to rage, especially thinking that the hospital had a ‘fault’. Due to the obscure medical terms and the limitation of their ability to accept, the situation may be worse if the intermediary is a professional doctor personnel rather than those who are specialized in dispute resolution.
How to resolve the doctor-patient contradiction that occurs because doctor-patient communication is not smooth? We suggest that the government can set up emergency institutions to solve medical disputes in conjunction with hospitals, such as a special office for dealing with doctor-patient emergency in hospitals, which is equipped with medical professionals, psychological counseling personnel and legal publicity personnel. When doctor-patient dispute occurs, contact emergency office to intervene early by the doctor, make corresponding medical misgivings and professional psychological counseling for the patients and their families, combined with law promotion about medical disputes, which can eliminate mistrust and contradiction between hospital and patients by the professional and fair doctor-patient dispute processing mechanism. Though the aforementioned measures, we may settle medical trouble originally, and make patients feel fair and warm even if they are staying in hospital.
Meanwhile, according to data from the Beijing municipal commission of medical dispute mediation, among 30 percentage of disputes settled between 2011 and 2013, hospitals are found to be blameless, but they still signed compensation agreements to appease patients. The hospital’s attitude of appeasement has contributed to the unhealthy atmosphere. Therefore, medical institutions should stick to the principle of handling affairs in accordance with the law and solve disputes in a legal and reasonable way.
Finally, no matter how anxious or afraid, patients and their families should trust the professional medical staff. To become a doctor requires 5+3+X years i.e. at least 11 years of hard study. They are all excellent angels in white with pursuit, so please show understanding, respect, patience and trust to the medical staff which is the real concern for patients.
The lancet, a medical journal, once published figures showing that China trained 4.7 million medical students between 2005 and 2015, but only increased the number of doctors by 750,000. It is not your illusion that China is losing doctors. Injuring doctor? Hope that the true angels in white can be protected by wings, and we are all willing to be such wings.
