Disgruntled relatives of a patient push a young doctor to suicide
The tragic death of a young female doctor by suicide last week due to coercion by angry relatives of a patient, who had died under her care, has stunned the medical profession and society.
From press reports I gathered that Dr Archana Sharma (in Rajasthan) was attending to a female patient who had bled massively from the uterus following childbirth, and whom she was unable to save.
Agitated relatives had accused her of negligence, had barged into the local police station, and then went on to press the charge of murder. The police had obligingly cooperated, leaving the female doctor helplessly alone and deeply hurt.
In her desperation and as a vindication of her innocence Dr Sharma chose to end her life, leaving behind two children and her husband. In her suicide note she stated that she had done no wrong, but had been unable to save the patient.
Post-partum bleeding can sometimes be very massive and kill within minutes despite transfusion of large amounts of blood as well as medicines, uterine packing and rarely requiring emergency surgery. This unfortunate event is a reflection of several social beliefs and practices that we need to face up.
For one, we are getting increasingly intolerant of the fact that death can indeed occur in critical conditions despite the best of interventions. Then whenever a patient dies, our society believes that it has to be somebody’s fault! We seem obsessed to ascribe culpability and hound someone till punishment is meted.
It is amusing to see the CCTV footage of road traffic accidents for instance; the relative is often seen running after the offending vehicle rather than attending to the victim lying on the road.
There is no space for doctors to fail in their human efforts. I wish members of the society in other walks of life, of say a place like Dausa in Rajasthan, hold themselves to such unreasonably high standards too.
Even more shocking was the role of the police who seemed be saving their backs from an unreasonable agitated mob, rather than defending a helpless female doctor being victimized and coerced.
The reason why young doctors choose not to settle in small towns and villages should be evident by now. They flock to big towns and cities, not just for money, but for better living conditions, and better security.
I shuddered to think what I could have done had I been in her place.
The government machinery needs to take urgent corrective steps and instill confidence in young medicos if they want doctors to serve in smaller places.