Maligning Doctors on social networking sites: A trend to be discouraged
Hitesh Gopalan MS(Orth),
Fellowship in Joint Reconstruction(Lilavati
and BreachCandy Hospital, Mumbai),
Fellowship in Sports Surgery(Chang
Gung Memorial Hospital, Taiwan),
Visiting Lecturer, Centre for
Evidence Based Orthopaedics, McMaster Unviersity, Canada
Editor, Orthopaedic Principles A Review
Editor, Handbook of Orthopaedics
Editorial Board Member, Journal of
Orthopaedics, Indian Journal of Orthopaedics
SICOT India Core Scientific Member
Clinical Assistant Professor, Orthopaedics and Traumatology
There is no doubt that medical
profession is facing grave challenges. It takes years to become a doctor and
once you become a doc, you need further training to refine your skills and
provide the best possible treatment.An incident that happened in Delhi recently
Show how aggressively people can malign you.
The
story goes like this:
Patient A was admitted to a high
profile hospital in Delhi, India. The patient complained of pain in the ankle following an injury
and Xrays were ordered. Xrays showed a lateral malleolar (outside bone of ankle)fracture.
The doctor after careful examination and review of Xrays suggested that it
would better to operate on the ankle as there was a high risk of late
displacement, and the potential for a
less than optimal function of the ankle if NOT operated. Now, this is the
season of "Second opinions". Everyone wants to go for a second
opinion, third opinion and probably a 'n'th opinion. It is very well understood
in medical and orthopaedic literature that a single fracture can be treated in
many different ways. Sometimes an early surgery can get the patient back to his
job quickly. Modern day Orthopaedics is all about bringing a patient back to
his normal function at the earliest.We are talking about "Restoring Motion
and Resumption of work", in every conference in India and abroad.
Now patient A and his family goes to
many doctors and take 'n' of opinions. And possibly many of them had a more
conservative approach and recommended against surgery. Patient A and his
relatives now plan to malign this doctor in the
maximum possible way. They make an image and write a few words that puts
the doctor in bad light, that they wrote his name and hospital affiliation and
posted in multiple facebook profile 'walls" and "groups". What
is surprising is that they even created an application to make these posts go
" viral". The post was shared by 22000 people.
There is no doubt that this is quite
rather an unusual behaviour by a group of paranoid individuals who want to show
the medical profession in bad light. All of us must rise to the occasion and
see that we protect our fellows and friends in medicine, especially if you hold the highest level of
medical ethics close to your heart. The only way is to educate the public that
there is a long way that one has to travel to become a doctor. There are
countless nu mber of exams, failures and
hardships in this journey. Before you
put down a doctor think for 5 minutes about the sacrifices a doctor endures
during his lifetime. Take one minute of your time to share this post on your facebook and twitter profile. Tweet
#SaveMedicine. Share it so that it reaches 22001 people. Share the following Image as well.
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| Tweet #SaveMedicine |
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