Cues
Cures
Updated 11:27pm (Mla time) Oct 04, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the October 5, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
I sympathize completely with Minguita Padilla (PDI, 9/29/04) in her crusade to vindicate doctors from the witch hunt being waged against them by some people in media and Congress. Chief of them Korina Sanchez, who seems to have made it her life's work to make doctors pay for the sins of the world, and Serge Osmena, who has decided to lead the torch-carrying mob laying siege at Frankenstein's castle.
Sanchez has renewed her attacks against doctors in her radio and TV shows, while Osmena has authored Senate Bill 1720 criminalizing "medical malpractice" and forcing doctors to get "mandatory malpractice insurance."
As Padilla says, in these days, when doctors are leaving the country faster than you can say "penicillin," it is inconceivable why we persecute them in this way. With government cutting down on its health budget ("it now allocates a scandalous 35 centavos per Filipino" for health), with fewer students taking up medicine ("at least 35 medical schools are on the brink of collapse because of a large drop in enrollment"), and with the ranks of doctors in this country so depleted the UP-PGH, "which used to turn away so many applicants for residency (not even able) to fill up half of its available positions today," we may wake up soon to find out there's no one left to give balm to our wounds.
One would imagine, Padilla says, that those who have remained behind--and most of them have done so by choice--would be objects of much adulation. Instead, they have become objects of opprobrium.
Let me be clear about a couple of things from the start.
I do know that medical malpractice happens, and I agree that they may even be rampant. I do know that patients are often at the mercy of hospitals, are often overcharged, and are often given a raw deal, either not getting better or even getting worse. It's not only because each time I listen to AM radio while on the road I get to hear these complaints from the public in various talk shows and commentaries. It's also because I get to hear these complaints directly from friends and relations. Try telling a horror story about doctors and hospitals in a family gathering, and you won't hear the end of it. You'll get a dozen stories along the same lines, each one worse than the last.
My own good friend Rodolfo Salas' son-in-law died in what they reckon to be a case of hospital negligence. The young man choked to death from his vomit in the middle of the night after he was taken in for intestinal pains. A decade or so ago, I wrote several columns on the eye-popping number of deaths in Cebu stemming from doctors taking in more patients than they could handle. These things do happen. And it is alarming that they do.
And I do agree that something ought to be done about it. I agree that it is not enough that doctors just promise to reprimand and punish the guilty. People have every reason to complain and bring their cases to the attention of media when the Philippine Medical Association proves deaf to their entreaty. People have every reason to demand that their cases, which represent a grave injustice, do not go the way of coup plots or mutinies where the perpetrators are given push-ups.
What mechanisms this will take, however, I do not know. I do know enough conscientious doctors to say with confidence that a dialogue between them and the public on this score will not be a dialogue of the deaf. They are as much concerned with the integrity of the profession they love as the public is of the health it cherishes.
What I am against is turning doctors into The Enemy. Which is what such things as criminalizing medical malpractice and forcing doctors to buy malpractice insurance do. They turn doctors into suspects who may be presumed guilty until proven innocent. At the very least of course, what it will do is jack up the cost of doctors and hospitals.
But that is nothing. The best argument against it I heard from a friend, who said it would effectively end medical volunteer work, particularly among the poor in the countryside. Doctors who volunteer thus have to make do with crude instruments and the most adverse conditions to treat patients. Now why would anyone want to do that if all she or he would get from their pains would be an Atorni Agaton trying to make a fast buck on an operation gone sour-malpractice being criminal, it can be brought to court by anyone other than the victim or the victim's kin--by making a case of it?
One truly would imagine that it's bad enough that we do not pin medals on those who have decided to stay behind amid the lure of greener pastures in Canada and elsewhere. Though, of course, the exiles are not always guaranteed work as doctors, which is double the pity. One would truly imagine that with Elmer Jacinto, the young man from Basilan who topped the medical board exams, setting a horrendous example by agreeing to work as a caregiver in New York, we would want to give our doctors, full-blown or burgeoning, all the incentives they need to stay. But to make their lives hell instead?
Having survived asthma as a kid and various afflictions as an adult with no small help from doctors, I personally cannot understand Sanchez's and Osmena's tack. The doctors are right to argue that at least they, who hold the power of life and death over people's bodies, take exams to show they are qualified. Whereas those in media, particularly TV which is ubiquitous, who hold the power of life and death over people's reputations, do not. I have always asked myself that question too, why journalism is not a licensed occupation. Why anyone can feel free to call himself, or herself, a journalist while merely poisoning the air with verbal smog.
But it will take more than doctors to cure that.
Updated 11:27pm (Mla time) Oct 04, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the October 5, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
I sympathize completely with Minguita Padilla (PDI, 9/29/04) in her crusade to vindicate doctors from the witch hunt being waged against them by some people in media and Congress. Chief of them Korina Sanchez, who seems to have made it her life's work to make doctors pay for the sins of the world, and Serge Osmena, who has decided to lead the torch-carrying mob laying siege at Frankenstein's castle.
Sanchez has renewed her attacks against doctors in her radio and TV shows, while Osmena has authored Senate Bill 1720 criminalizing "medical malpractice" and forcing doctors to get "mandatory malpractice insurance."
As Padilla says, in these days, when doctors are leaving the country faster than you can say "penicillin," it is inconceivable why we persecute them in this way. With government cutting down on its health budget ("it now allocates a scandalous 35 centavos per Filipino" for health), with fewer students taking up medicine ("at least 35 medical schools are on the brink of collapse because of a large drop in enrollment"), and with the ranks of doctors in this country so depleted the UP-PGH, "which used to turn away so many applicants for residency (not even able) to fill up half of its available positions today," we may wake up soon to find out there's no one left to give balm to our wounds.
One would imagine, Padilla says, that those who have remained behind--and most of them have done so by choice--would be objects of much adulation. Instead, they have become objects of opprobrium.
Let me be clear about a couple of things from the start.
I do know that medical malpractice happens, and I agree that they may even be rampant. I do know that patients are often at the mercy of hospitals, are often overcharged, and are often given a raw deal, either not getting better or even getting worse. It's not only because each time I listen to AM radio while on the road I get to hear these complaints from the public in various talk shows and commentaries. It's also because I get to hear these complaints directly from friends and relations. Try telling a horror story about doctors and hospitals in a family gathering, and you won't hear the end of it. You'll get a dozen stories along the same lines, each one worse than the last.
My own good friend Rodolfo Salas' son-in-law died in what they reckon to be a case of hospital negligence. The young man choked to death from his vomit in the middle of the night after he was taken in for intestinal pains. A decade or so ago, I wrote several columns on the eye-popping number of deaths in Cebu stemming from doctors taking in more patients than they could handle. These things do happen. And it is alarming that they do.
And I do agree that something ought to be done about it. I agree that it is not enough that doctors just promise to reprimand and punish the guilty. People have every reason to complain and bring their cases to the attention of media when the Philippine Medical Association proves deaf to their entreaty. People have every reason to demand that their cases, which represent a grave injustice, do not go the way of coup plots or mutinies where the perpetrators are given push-ups.
What mechanisms this will take, however, I do not know. I do know enough conscientious doctors to say with confidence that a dialogue between them and the public on this score will not be a dialogue of the deaf. They are as much concerned with the integrity of the profession they love as the public is of the health it cherishes.
What I am against is turning doctors into The Enemy. Which is what such things as criminalizing medical malpractice and forcing doctors to buy malpractice insurance do. They turn doctors into suspects who may be presumed guilty until proven innocent. At the very least of course, what it will do is jack up the cost of doctors and hospitals.
But that is nothing. The best argument against it I heard from a friend, who said it would effectively end medical volunteer work, particularly among the poor in the countryside. Doctors who volunteer thus have to make do with crude instruments and the most adverse conditions to treat patients. Now why would anyone want to do that if all she or he would get from their pains would be an Atorni Agaton trying to make a fast buck on an operation gone sour-malpractice being criminal, it can be brought to court by anyone other than the victim or the victim's kin--by making a case of it?
One truly would imagine that it's bad enough that we do not pin medals on those who have decided to stay behind amid the lure of greener pastures in Canada and elsewhere. Though, of course, the exiles are not always guaranteed work as doctors, which is double the pity. One would truly imagine that with Elmer Jacinto, the young man from Basilan who topped the medical board exams, setting a horrendous example by agreeing to work as a caregiver in New York, we would want to give our doctors, full-blown or burgeoning, all the incentives they need to stay. But to make their lives hell instead?
Having survived asthma as a kid and various afflictions as an adult with no small help from doctors, I personally cannot understand Sanchez's and Osmena's tack. The doctors are right to argue that at least they, who hold the power of life and death over people's bodies, take exams to show they are qualified. Whereas those in media, particularly TV which is ubiquitous, who hold the power of life and death over people's reputations, do not. I have always asked myself that question too, why journalism is not a licensed occupation. Why anyone can feel free to call himself, or herself, a journalist while merely poisoning the air with verbal smog.
But it will take more than doctors to cure that.
posted by Dante at 12:00 AM
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