Lack of communication
A lack of communication between doctors and patients should be to blame for the cause of the misunderstanding of the public toward the medical profession.
"Doctors should communicate with patients, letting them know that accidents could happen anytime. They should not expect to recover in the same way as others even receiving similar treatment, since they are all different from each other," said Wang Zhong.
Ji Jiafu, president of the Peking University Cancer Hospital (PUCH)， added that doctors should try to reduce the unrealistic expectations of their patients.
"Education on doctor-patient communication is far from enough now," noted Zhou Sheng, vice head of the Beijing Anzhen Hospital. He added that doctors are equipped with three tools to treat patients—communication, medicine, and the scalpel—but most of them are only capable of using the latter two.
Gu Jin, senior doctor of the PUCH, further explained that doctors in most large hospitals are often overloaded, which makes it hard for them to talk with the patients.
Third-party mediation mechanism
A credible third-party mediation mechanism is needed to free hospitals from medical disputes and effectively improve the medical practice environment, reported the People's Daily.
"Violence against doctors is complicated and can only be completely solved by improving related laws and regulations, and setting up a dispute arbitration mechanism," said Zheng Xueqian, a department head at the Chinese Hospital Association.
"Currently, the police are coping with such violence rather poorly and only take action when people get injured," Zheng pointed out. According to the Law of the People's Republic of China on Public Security Administration Punishments, those who disturb the order of any public institution and make it impossible for medical services to carry on should be punished.
Zheng added that the mainland should adopt more specific regulations to plug legal loopholes in medical disputes.
Currently, lawsuits, mediation, and technical appraisal for medical negligence are the major ways to deal with medical disputes. However, the parties concerned tend to mediate the issues out of court, which specifically refers to the hidden rules of "big compensation to the angriest patients, small compensation to the less angry ones, and no compensation to the quiet ones."
According to the Ministry of Health (MOH)， China will soon set up a third party institution and medical liability insurance to settle medical disputes. The institute will be independent from MOH, hospitals and insurance companies, and handle disputes for free and in accordance with the principles of equality and voluntary compliance.
