Hospitals mull greater security after deadly incidents involving doctors, patients

Areas in China plan to adopt regulations to protect medical personnel and maintain order at hospitals, while testing security measures, such as alarm wristbands on doctors, after a Beijing doctor was recently killed by a patient’s relative.

Li Wei, director of the Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal People’s Congress, said at Tuesday’s conference in Beijing that they would implement the regulations in response to public concerns.

Discussions on the safety of medical personnel have gripped China. Yang Wen, a doctor from the Civil Aviation General Hospital in Beijing, died on December 25, 2019 after being slashed in the neck.

Several attacks on doctors by patients and their relatives have occurred in China in the past years.

Last October, a doctor at the People’s Hospital of Gansu Province in Northwest China was stabbed to death by one of his patients.

Other areas in the country are stepping up security measures.

An anonymous staff member of the People’s Hospital in Xi’an, Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province told the Global Times on Tuesday that they are trying out the use of alarm wristbands.

The doctors of the department wear the bands in case of an emergency, the staff member said. The hospital will apply more measures, including installing alarms in wards, the staff member said.

Despite good intentions, skeptics abound on social media, the staff member noted.

Some netizens said the measures only cure the symptoms, not the disease, or don’t address the underlying causes.

They said the measures are only temporary and called on authorities to adopt laws and regulations to protect the medical personnel’s rights and create a harmonious environment and communicable channel for the patient and doctor.

The National People’s Congress on December 28, 2019, voted to adopt a law for the improvement of basic medical and health care, including protecting the safety of medical personnel.

The new law will take effect on June 1.

Shanghai-based media outlet thepaper.cn quoted an anonymous medical worker as saying that they felt reassured after the hospital beefed up security.

However, another medical worker did not support the measures, claiming that the security checks could lead to confrontations between doctors and patients.