Prioritise ‘System’ Over Doctors For Treatment: Experts

Last year Lancent reported that India registers 55 per cent of cardiac deaths caused by delays in seeking care. This phenomenon is prevalent across various diseases and not only results in a financial burden but also preventable mortality. This substantiates the need for an ecosystem that should be attentive, affirmative, action-oriented, and makes people aware. 

When it is said that prevention is better than cure, it also includes going to doctors, if one feels any sort of dysfunctionality. Experts opine that if one delays or covers up and is shy about saying symptoms, and ends up with any major disease, that's not the doctor's fault. At first, patient will have to be aware enough to talk freely with the doctor. “I'm not just a recipient. I'm going to be a partner in my health,” commented Nadira Chaturvedi, Co-Chair, Patients for Patient Safety Foundation. She added that patient safety is a culture for her. It's preventing errors and all this is happening in good hospitals with the use of modern treatment practices.

Developed treatment solutions are catering to the needs of ever-evolving new-age diseases. New technologies and big data analytics, have transformed doctor’s consciousness and eased the diagnosis be it finding the disease more accurately or having diagnosis practices. Research and clinical trials have fostered the treatment delivery mechanism benefitting patients and reducing mortality rates. Raj Prakash Vyas, President- Corporate Affairs, Cadila, said, “Data is like sanjeevani booti for doctors. It enables doctors to do individual-specific treatments. While with the help of AI, devices might be created that would recognise cancer and its stage only based on voice.”

Patient safety has evolved. From telepathy to telemedicine, human-led operations to robotics, generations have changed. However, experts believe that the vast term like patient safety is still in developing phase.  Pawan Kapoor, AVSM, VSM (Rtd), Former DGMS (Air Force) & Chairman, Steering Committee, NABH, said, “From 2005 to 2024, the same question is being asked, how do you bring patient safety to the forefront? That means in 19 years, patient safety is not in the forefront. WHO has stated in the year 2014, that the chance of harm in healthcare is 1 in 10. In 2024, on the website, the WHO continued to say the chance due to healthcare errors is 1 in 10. So, there has been no improvement.”

Learning from drawbacks

Experts believe that the first attempt to solution is to create awareness, but not only amongst healthcare professionals, will have to create awareness in the community, and society. They emphasised to use all technology, all digital media, and all modes of communication to create that awareness. The system should be in place. But to get those systems in place, it require a cultural change. To get that cultural change into place, one have to change one’s attitudes and mindsets. Though it seems to be not happening yet.

The next thing after having systems in place is to ensure priority areas of focus, where a focus should be because patient safety is a vast subject. It is a discipline now which requires all patient safety incidents to be collected, to be reported, to be monitored, analysed and action taken to be disseminated to everybody without revealing the identity of the healthcare organisation, of the patient, and of the staff involved. And lastly, the most important aspect of bringing patient safety to the forefront is that engages patients. Urvashi Prasad, Former Director, Niti Aayog, stated, “ We need more education of patients, more awareness, empathy from, all stakeholders.”

When we talk about ecosystems and patients' safety that also includes doctors' safety. Who may forget the Kolkata rape incident with a trainee doctor? One generally witnesses attacks on doctors. Addressing the query of moderator, Swati Bhat, MD & Sr. Consultant Intervention Pain, IPSC Pain and Spine Hospital; Prasad talked about the heterogeneously of the Indian healthcare system.

She added, “One part of our problem is that we have a great degree of heterogeneity, informality, problems with qualifications, etc. We often have a lot of policies and legislation, but they remain on paper. My very firm belief is that it is implementation that we are lacking in. State governments have a very big role to play as health is a state subject. They are accountable for the safety of everybody in a health facility, whether it's the patient, the attendant, the health personnel, the doctors, the nurses or anybody.”

The panel discussion took place at BW Healthcare World Business Of Healthcare Summit in New Delhi.

Navneet Singh

BW Reporters The author is a trainee correspondent with BW Businessworld