China trying to stop patients from killing doctors

BEIJING – China plans to beef up security in its hospitals to prevent the deaths of doctors and nurses in attacks by patients' relatives outraged over the cost and quality of care.

Emotions often run high at Chinese hospitals, a result of resentment over expensive and hard-to-access medical treatment. Anger can be compounded by the need to pay bribes to guarantee good service and supplement doctors' usually low wages.
Monday, several people severely beat three doctors at a hospital in south China's Guangzhou city after they were unable to immediately take home the body of a deceased, elderly relative.

"All medical personnel feel insecure!" wrote Eric Chong, deputy secretary general of the China Hospital Association, on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter equivalent, after the incident. "We need all sectors of society and the government to face up to this, and make a self-criticism! Otherwise China's medical service has no future!" he wrote.


A survey by Chong's association, released in August, showed the annual average number of assaults on doctors increased to 27.3 per hospital in 2012, up from 20.6 in 2008.

Reasons for the violence included unsatisfactory treatment, poor doctor-patient communication, high expenses for patients and insufficient medical resources, the survey found. Nearly 40% of the medical staff surveyed at 316 hospitals said they planned to give up their profession because of the increase in violence, the survey said.


If a doctor succeeds in curing them, "patients are happy and willing to give bribes. But if a doctor receives bribes but fails to cure the patient, they lost both life and money, and the relatives will be extremely angry, it's impossible to ask them to behave in a rational manner," he said.

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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/10/24/china-hospital-attacks/3178633/