'Media can strengthen doctor-patient relationship'

Professionalism is must in every profession and doctors and scribes are no exception because expectation level of people from both professions is very high, KSHEMA Pediatrics Surgery Department head Dr Sandeep Rai said.

Interacting with media persons at a doctors-media interaction programme organised by Mangaluru Press Club, in association with Centre for Health and Development (CHD) and Association of Medical Consultants (AMC) at Patrika Bhavan, Dr Rai said the utmost priority of a doctor during any emergency situation is to save the life of a patient.

If the condition is very critical and it is not possible to do so, the doctors will convey the same to the patient’s relatives. When the doctors tell the reality, the relatives become anxious to the extent that they manhandle the doctors and other nursing staff. One must understand that the doctors will not like to give up and make maximum efforts to save the patient, he said citing a few examples on how doctors try their best to save lives.

Agreeing that medical negligence does occur once in a while as doctors too are human beings, he noted that nobody does it intentionally. He also requested the government to provide state-of-the-art facilities at government hospitals so that the less privileged too can have the benefits.

Earlier, senior journalist N T Guruvappa Balepuni said that there is a need to improvise the communication between doctors with patients. There should be a proper framework by the medical institutions to share authentic information with journalists as well so that there is no scope for inaccurate news appearing in media. “Many times, scribes fail to get authentic news before the deadline giving scope for inaccurate news,” he said.

In reply, Association of Medical Consultants (AMC) convener and trauma and plastic surgeon Dr Sathish Bhat said the AMC will take steps to start a WhatsApp group of doctors and scribes so that the scribes get correct news quickly.

Centre for Health and Development CEO Dr Edmond Fernandes explained the purpose of the interaction in the wake of growing incidents of miscommunication or lack of communication between doctors and media personnel.

Appealing to the media to bridge and strengthen doctor-patient relationship, he said plans are on the anvil to prepare guidelines based on the day’s interaction to bridge the gap to help greater communicability of scientific content through the media to people.