CONSUMER RIGHTS
Prescription for doctors
Pushpa Girimaji

THE Supreme Court, in the case of Poonam Verma vs Ashwin Patel, had categorically stated that a doctor, qualified in one form of medicine, cannot practice another, and anyone who does that would be held guilty of negligence per se, and there was no need for any further proof of negligence. The Supreme Court in fact had gone so far as to describe such persons as quacks and pretenders. In that case, a doctor, qualified in the system of homoeopathy, had administered allopathic medicines to a patient, eventually resulting in his death.

Here is a case where a hospital employed a unani doctor, and despite knowing that he did not possess the necessary skill and competence to give allopathic treatment, put him in charge of treating a 23-year-old admitted to the hospital. Holding the hospital liable for the death of Jai Dev Kumar, the apex consumer court has sent out a clear warning to all such hospitals that employ unqualified persons that they would be held accountable for their actions. More importantly, it has made it clear that the very act of employing an unqualified person opens up the hospital to the charge of gross negligence.

On October 21, 1996, at around 10 am Jai Dev Kumar was admitted to Hans Charitable Hospital with fever, nausea, vomiting and bleeding from the nose. At 10 pm that night, Kumar breathed his last. The postmortem, conducted at the Civil Hospital, Delhi, showed the cause of the death to be choking consequent to aspiration of blood in the airway. The postmortem report commented that "in this type of bleeding, the possibility of aspiration is not unforeseen and could have been prevented".

The distressed parents filed a complaint before the apex court, seeking compensation on the ground that the death of their young, promising son was caused by sheer negligence at the hospital. After examining the case in detail, the commission pointed out that even though Kumar was admitted to the hospital at 10 am, and a physician, who saw him referred the case to an ENT specialist, an ENT consultant saw him only at 3.40 pm. Even though he had nasal bleeding several times after admission—at 3.30 pm, 4 pm and 5.45 pm— a nasal pack to stop the bleeding was placed only at 7.15 pm. Said the commission: "There is no evidence whatsoever on record to prove that an effort was made to clear the blocked airways from the time the patient was admitted.’’

The hospital records also showed that the unani doctor made most of the entries, and he was the one who was attending on the patient at various points of time on that critical day. Observed the commission:’’ When a patient is admitted to a hospital, it is done with the belief that the treatment given in the hospital is being given by doctors qualified under the Indian Medical Council Act. It is not within the knowledge of the relatives that the patient is being treated by a unani specialist.’’

Concluding that this was a case of total callousness, ignorance and lack of medical ethics on the part of the hospital and the doctors, resulting in the death of a young person, the apex court said the hospital which had employed an unqualified doctor would be liable to pay the entire compensation amount of Rs 7.5 lakh and also Rs 50,000 towards the medical expenses incurred by the family.

This is not the first time that the apex court has pulled up a hospital for employing unqualified persons. In the case of Harjot Singh Ahluwalia vs Spring Meadows Hospital, the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission had come down heavily on the hospital for employing an unqualified nurse and entrusting the care of a two-year-old child to her.

In this case the nurse had not only misread the doctor’s prescription but had administered the wrong medicine without even a test dose and without the supervision of a doctor. Worse, she had given a dosage that was three-and-a-half-times the dosage required for a child of two years.

"We feel it is high time that hospital authorities realised that the practice of employing non-medical practitioners, such as those specialising in the unani system, who do not possess the required skill and competence to give allopathic treatment, and allowing them to treat patients is gross negligence", the commission said.

HOME