A QUESTION OF MEDICAL ETHICS

There was a time when the Doctors were considered just next to God, with their feelings of service to the society while treating the patients. But slowly the things have deteriorated and such feelings appear to be non-existent now. It is understood that nowadays a Doctor gets associated or linked with some testing/diagnostic laboratory &/or a pharmaceutical company on commission basis. But this was not the case earlier. When a person goes for consultation, the Specialist Doctor advises some tests and tells verbally to go to a particular testing laboratory, saying that they are good. But later on we may find that they are not reliable. Also they may be far away from our residence. We may not be advised to visit any of the centres near our house, with the result we have to travel longer distances twice, once for giving samples and then for collecting the testing report. Similarly, when we visit the eye specialist for checking our eye sight for putting on glasses, we may be advised to visit a particular optician shop for placing the order for the glasses. This may also be far away from our residence and here also we are required to visit the shop twice, once for placing the order and next for collecting the glasses. This advice could also be for visiting a certain Orthopedics/Dental/ENT/Skin or any other Specialist and also a certain Pathological laboratory for certain tests. It appears that the Doctors are having contacts or deals with other Doctors/Diagnostic centres for prescribing necessary (and probably also unnecessary) tests for which they may be getting hefty commissions. Some Doctors or group of Doctors organize so called free camps for consultation, due to which they might be getting much more money through commissions. The whole thing appears to be centred around money and not around treating patients with minimum tests, troubles and expenses to the patients. Among other instances, I have faced giving of wrong prescriptions for my glasses. At one time the Doctor did not check the near vision, which should have been checked at that age. The glasses made as per the prescription given by him had to be remade. I had to spend money and time and face trouble. At another time the Doctor wrote the prescription of another patient for me and I had to face similar problems of money, time and trouble for remaking of glasses. In both the cases, the Doctors neither compensated me nor expressed regrets in any way. The relationship of a Doctor-patient appears to have now become vitiated.