Doctor murdered in Kerala hospital: Who’s on probation, interns or hospital managements?

Dr Vandana Das was stabbed at 4.30 am by a patient who was brought in by policemen. (Image source: Twitter/Dr Rakesh Bagdi Gurjar)

Random acts of violence – with no history between perpetrator and victim – point to deep-seated anger and mental health issues. Every place is fraught with danger, be it indoors or outdoors. So many fatalities occur in the domestic space, especially involving children, but it is in the external areas that we venture out trustingly. Taking for granted infrastructural solidity and our own safety.

The medical fraternity is always the first in line, be it a pandemic or an emergency case. The hierarchy within the sector is not easily discernible to us, the patients. Like everywhere else, poorly paid interns are put on round-the-clock duty. As of now, in India, there is no actual weekly day off for them. They work a 12- to 36-hour shift, including night shifts, seven days a week. Apart from being pulled up for minor reasons by overworked senior doctors – like inappropriate gear under their white coats or coming in five minutes late – they are expected to turn up however ill they themselves may be.

Could the recent murder of Dr Vandana Das in full public view have been avoided? In hindsight all the glitches are painfully visible. MBBS degree in hand, Vandana had just joined a hospital in Kollam district, Kerala. An only child, she was working the night shift, which at 4.30 a.m. was coming to an end. A new patient coming in should have been a routine event. But this was a man with a history of drug abuse and recent unemployment. Despite being accompanied by a couple of policemen, the nurse who attended to him found him aggressive. When he picked up a pair of scissors from a medical tray and began to stab people around him, most of the staff was able to lock themselves up in a room. Vandana was not so lucky.

Medical staff know very well that they occupy a battlefield, that they come in daily to fight a system, a mindset, ignorance and disease. Their own wellbeing, mental or physical, is never a priority for the hospitals they work in. The humanitarian view is one-way: a better bedside manner, a more humane approach towards patients, to empathize with the terminally ill... What about the men and women in scrubs? How are they coping?

The murder of this doctor was neither gender violence nor personal enmity. It was just a sundry exercising of a madman’s will, bringing to light the utter lack of preparedness, the mindless nature of routines, and the vulnerability of frontline healthcare staff. Their focus on the bigger picture – to heal and cure – make sitting ducks of them. Relatives of deceased patients who cannot handle reality can go on a rampage, damaging hospital property or attacking the doctors concerned.

Who is responsible for the security of those who tend to us? Especially those at the lower rung of the system, the junior-most docs, happy in their new scrubs, exploited by a chain of administrative shoddiness. Like nunneries and cults, hospitals too operate on a caste system, where the most expendable seem to be the apprentices.