Specialists (doctors) should form inbuilt mechanism (internal forums) at least to admit that he or she has made a mistake and own up, which will help increase their credibility, said Abishekh Goyal, Superintendent of Police, Dakshina Kannada.
Speaking at an event to announce the formation of the Mangalore branch of the Association of Medical Consultants (AMC), which is affiliated to AMC Mumbai, he said that mistakes were often hushed up and not brought up even at the Indian Medical Association (IMA).
When mistakes occur, the issue should be sorted out and an internal audit done, which would add to doctors’ credibility. However, doctors’ associations, like other professional associations, are a “one-way street”, only defending their members. It (defending members of an association) stands true for all associations, including IPS association and engineers’ association, he said.
He described IMA as “a recreational body”, which organised dinners every week that are “good for doctors to chill out”. He himself had attended 100 such dinners, he said. An engineer now in the police, Mr. Goyal grew up in hospitals for the first 15 years of his life as his parents were doctors, who ran a nursing home in Punjab. So, he understood the world of doctors, the officer said. Mr. Goyal said the role of the police was to ensure that a forum was there for affected people to complain. It took up cases with wilful and gross negligence. Other cases were dealt by the consumer forum.
Dr. Lalit Kapoor, former president of Mumbai wing of the AMC, said that doctors belong to a profession that was exalted with great responsibility and its members must not defend a mistake.
Before the programme, in a discussion, Mr. Kapoor said that when the media covers an issue of a doctor’s neglect, doctor’s version was not taken. In such cases, doctors could approach the Press Council. “We deserve it (biased media reports) because we want to be in our comfort zone. We don’t know our rights,” he said. He told the audience of doctors to write their versions of events and send it to the media who had covered the issue.
More than 100 doctors had registered as members of the AMC’s Mangalore branch, said Dr. K.R. Kamath, Secretary, AMC, Mangalore.
