“Oh, he’s still alive!”

We were taught medical ethics in the second year of medical school, as part of forensic medicine. Not more than three or four hours was spent on the issue in my years at medical school.

The discussion consisted of ethics in medical practice, with no reference to patient care. Besides the classroom sessions, senior doctors would give instances of unethical practice, and contemporaries would share ‘hospital gossip’ on their seniors’ behaviour.

Often senior doctors disregard the discomfort of patients or ignore relatives’ complaints. Moreover, even in an emergency, they tend to act rather slowly, often at the cost of the patient’s life. For example a patient once walked in with a head injury and though he survived the first CT scan the houseman exclaimed, “Oh! he’s still alive,” and instead of taking him to the emergency operation theatre sent him for a repeat CT where the patient died on the table. Of course, we are not at liberty to discuss these issues with the seniors.

Ethics has to be at the centre of all our work. For this, the subject should be discussed from the very beginning of our medical education so that it is ingrained into our later work.