问答题

In China, violence against medical personnel is on the rise as the doctor-patient conflict gets increasingly nasty. According to statistics, violent crimes that cause severe injury or death to medical personnel have increased drastically to 27.3 cases last year. The following news report provides details of this phenomenon. Read it carefully and write your response in NO LESS THAN 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize briefly the news report; 2. give your comment. Why China’s Doctors Are Getting Beat Up The young doctor weeps as he is pulled before the crowd. The night before, he treated a patient for excessive alcohol consumption. That patient later died. And now he is surrounded by a mob that includes members of the deceased’s family. "That’s the doctor who killed the patient," someone yells. It takes 30 minutes for the police to break things up. Variations on this scene play out with alarming regularity in China. As the country’s healthcare system expands to meet the needs of an increasingly affluent, demanding populace, tensions between patients and doctors are running high. Over the past ten years, attacks jumped an average of almost 23% per year, according to the China Hospital Management Society. The causes are complex. China now provides some form of insurance to almost all of its citizens—no small feat. But the scope of the coverage is limited, the quality is uneven and the costs are still high. For many families, an emergency medical procedure means going into debt. Doctors counter that they are overworked and underpaid. The number of properly trained doctors and nurses has not kept pace with demand for care, leaving hospitals thinly staffed, particularly in rural areas. And, unlike their U.S. counterparts, most Chinese doctors are considered civil servants, and are paid accordingly. Some earn less than $500 a month, a token compared to private sector salaries, which are on the rise. In most major hospitals, pay depends on meeting patient quotas, ordering tests and prescribing medicine. The incentive is to focus on quantity, not necessarily the quality of care, argued Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a respected Chinese physician. "Think about this: In half a day a single doctor must see fifty or sixty patients," he said. "What does this say about patient access to a doctor and the doctor’s ’space’ to practice good medicine" When things go wrong—or when patients think they do—doctors have little protection. Quite often, a resentful patient and a terrified doctor will negotiate a settlement on the spot. If the doctor refuses to pay up, or is absent when the family comes looking, the situation may escalate. Last October, a patient angry about the outcome of nasal surgery stormed into the hospital, with a 30-cm blade. When he could not find his doctor, he charged at another doctor, who was stabbed to death. Morale could hardly be lower. "I regret very much having chosen to study medicine," wrote a Chinese medical student in the English medical journal the Lancet. The proportion of doctors who hoped their children would enter the profession dropped from a disheartening 11% ten years ago to a dismal 7% last year, according to statistics from the Chinese Medical Doctors’ Association. At annual meetings in Beijing this week, delegate Bai Yansong, a famous anchorman, suggested China establish Doctor’s Day to increase the public’s respect for the profession. It is not a bad idea, and was no doubt well-intentioned. But keeping China’s doctors safe requires much stronger medicine.