Several incidents of unempathetic behaviour against healthcare professionals by patients and their concerned individuals have been reported and discussed in the public domain. This post is a set of guidelines for the public on how to conduct themselves with healthcare professionals — whether as patients or their concerned ones.

In short,

1. Respect doctors' time.
2. Respect health professionals' priorities.
3. Nurses are not customer support agents.

Respect doctors' time

Doctors are human beings too. They have their own personal needs such as the urge to answer nature's call, have meals, attend to family emergency, tend to their own illnesses, etc. Sometimes, they miss their scheduled personal time due to their previous case extending, and now taking their break might eat into your scheduled time. It happens!

When they take some personal time for these necessities, don't get disgruntled. Instead respect their time and wait. Doing so might be actually beneficial to you — you don't need exhausted, rushy or distracted doctor and nurses checking you up.

In certain cases, doctors and patients don't have the luxury of time since the medical condition dictates its own time. Other times when there is the luxury of time, you must work as per your doctor's schedule. After all, it is either your health or your concerned individual's health — so you take the burden of rescheduling.

Respect health professionals' priorities

Doctors and nurses serve several roles in a healthcare centre; and therefore their priorities change spontaneously. It might be exactly at your appointment that an emergency case is brought in to the causality, or an admitted patient suffers some sudden complications.

Their goal is to save lives. So when there are two cases of saving lives, their priority goes to the more serious case — the case that gives them limited time to act. If the other case is a much serious case than yours, your doctor and nurses will leave for that. They would do the same if it were you or your concerned individual on the other end with the emergency.

Nurses are not customer suppport agents

The primarily role of nurses is to assist patients' diagonosis and treatment. They have no unfettered obligation to patients or their concerned individuals with other matters of the hospitalisation. They aren't customer support agents of the hospital and they must not be treated like one.

Their care for the patients is per the instructions of the doctors and the nursing manual. Their effectiveness is only limited by the administration of the hospital including its infrastructure, processes and workflows followed. If they miss something, it is more likely because of this design.

If there are any failures from the nurses, do not engage in public humiliation of that nurse and her failure. Nurses (especially those in India) go through a lot professional bottlenecks and hectic shit times. Public humiliation will only make things worse by making her either angry or sad; thus triggering a cognitive shutdown in her.

Such states of mind have higher risks of making further mistakes while nursing the patients with needles, medicines, measurements, reports, etc. Therefore, instead of engaging in public humiliation, take the complain to the nursing superintendent, your doctor or the hospital's public relations office. Deal with an intention to solve the problem; not worsen it.

If you are a health professional..

If you are a health professional, do let us know of the many misconducts you have faced or have seen others face from patients and their concerned individuals. This will help us improve this conduct guidelines whose only aim is to educate the public and facilitate a better working relationship with health professionals.