Death of a Patient or Death of Ethics???
What happens when a patient dies in a Private Hospital?
A news channel that is at the bottom of the TRP (Television Rating Point) breaks this news in bold and screaming letters with a menacing background score – ‘Hospital’s or Doctors’ Negligence claims a patient’s life!’
Caught off-guard, another news channel, eying the next week’s TAM (Television Audience Measurement) ratings, joins the melee with a news flash: `Media barred entry into Hospital’s ICU!’ Not willing to yield space to its competitors, one more news channel asks its crew to stage a Dharna at the hospital premises and before they reach the venue runs the scroll – `Journalists and Cameramen Stage a Dharna’.
Then follows an outbreak of breaking news:
- Relatives of the dead patient ransack hospital premises, damage furniture and beat-up the duty doctors and nurses
- EMJA (Electronic Media Journalists’ Association) condemns violation on press freedom
- Opposition parties flay all private hospital managements for its “profit making motives”
- Statements flood in from the leaders of opposition parties upholding media freedom
- Legislators along with their supporters descend on the scene; speak to the cameras, hail press freedom and demand action against the management.
Meanwhile, newsrooms come alive with debates over the dead patient. Animated discussions take place where trade union leaders, seasoned commentators as well as Senior Journalists lament on how profit-making Private Hospitals were responsible for all the ills facing the society.
They make a strong pitch for allowing news cameras into operation theatres – ICU wards as well – and earmark special areas in the hospitals for pitching tents to stage Dharnas and demonstrations.
And, if you are anxiously surfing the channels, looking for a doctor on any of the panels to know the cause of the patient’s death, you will surely be disappointed. None of the channels engage any medical expert to tell you what exactly went wrong.
When the hospital authorities issue an official statement announcing that the critically-ill patient died of cardiac arrest, it will be described as a “claim” and, as a rule, mentioned at the end of the news report. And, I am sure, it will not stand the rigorous scrutiny of the television debates.
— By
Sanjay Shukla “Lonely Recluse”