Helplessness of Doctors and Nurses in China

On May 7 this year, a petition called “Help to protect Chinese doctors from violence”, launched by Chinese medical workers, appeared on the website of We The People, asking the American government for seeking the way to interfere the medical violence happened in China. This move was triggered by another violent incident in China against a dentist, who was ultimately stabbed to death. However, it is not the first time for Chinese health providers to call US government for help. It seems somewhat ironic that why our doctors and nurses turned to other countries rather than their own hospitals or government for help. First, while dealing with violence in hospital, the first priority for Chinese government is to maintain the publicity stabilization rather than the safety of medical workers. It might even attempts to put the heat on hospitals to solve it by economic issues. As a hospital, it is also afraid of its reputation being effected by medical conflicts. Therefore, such incidents happen frequently every year across China, but the government and the hospitals seem to be more willing to settle them by non-judiciary channel. In the end, this kind of situation leaves many laws and regulations in name only, and very few of them are carried out (1). Moreover, the complexity and the specialty of medical conflicts exceed general society security cases. In order to play it safe, the police do not dare to respond to the conflicts in time, which to some extent indulges the development of medical violence. Finally, insufficiency of laws and regulations to protect medical staff in China, as well as incompletion of personal rights remedies system after medical violence intensifies the difficulties for our doctors and nurses to safeguard their own legal rights after they get into medical trouble. Doctors should have been esteemed and respected, but nowadays, their kindnesses are mistaken and even their lives are under great threat (2). Nobody can help them so that they feel hopeless and helpless and at last choose to turn to American government. To solve this social issue, Chinese government should take responsibility to push health system reform forward and establish specific laws to protect our medical workers. In addition, law enforcement should also be strengthened. Only by this way, when most Chinese people learn that the behavior “violence against doctors or nurses” is illegal, and when doctors are no longer distressed about who they can turn to when conflicts occur in hospitals, can judiciary channel be gradually be part of medical dispute settlement.