Attacks on doctors also harm patients

A doctor at the First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, who suffered multiple injuries after being stabbed on Friday died a day later despite efforts by his colleagues to revive him.

Li Sheng is now part of statistical data — one of over a dozen doctors who have died in over 400 attacks from patients or their relatives since 2000.

Attacks on doctors will ultimately end up hurting the patients. After decades of policy encouragement, by the end of 2021 the number of registered doctors domestically had reached 4.28 million, which means there are about three doctors for every 1,000 residents, a figure that still needs to be improved going by the long lines outside hospitals.

The state of the situation can be seen by the fact that a doctor as senior as Li, known for his rich experience in the cardiovascular department and patience with patients, is attacked and killed. When Tao Yong, a senior ophthalmologist at the Affiliated Beijing Chaoyang Hospital of Capital Medical University, was left with a paralyzed left hand following an attack in 2020, some of his patients were frantic because he was the only domestic doctor who could conduct surgeries.

Fortunately, the situation is improving now, with growing public opinion against attacks on doctors and the previous hate speech against doctors having largely disappeared. There is growing consensus now that attacking doctors is a malicious crime, which lays a solid foundation for rallying support for relevant legislative work to curb such attacks.