DOCTORS VS. MACHETES - WHEN GRIEF BECOMES A WEAPON

Hospitals are fast becoming battlegrounds where patient grief and anger collide. Horrifying reports have emerged across India - doctors assaulted, wards vandalized, lives threatened - all because a treatment didn't end the way a family hoped. In Kozhikkode, a grieving father stormed into a hospital with a machete; elsewhere, mobs have attacked medical personnel over perceived negligence. These incidents are not isolated; they expose a deeper crisis brewing in our healthcare system - and those sworn to save lives now fear for their own.

HEALERS TURNING HELPLESS

Doctors are no longer perceived as gods in India. The profession is identified just as another form of service - in the likes of engineering, law and business. Despite inhuman working hours such as 24-36-48 hour shifts, substandard working environment, carrying the weight of human suffering, we are often met with impatience, anger, abuse from patient families. Mistakes, delays or systemic shortcomings - many beyond our control - become reasons for personal grudges and grievances. Patient families expect the medicine to cause dramatic response in the patient within no time. They often overlook the bad prognosis explained to them by the attending physician. They expect the medical team to work wonders even if death is imminent - the treating doctor is branded as less skilled if he counsels the patient family in the likes of, "we're trying our level best."

The brewing frustration is also due to miscommunication in some cases. When updates are delayed or medical jargon is not explained simply, families feel deceived. Inadequate infrastructure can make even a skilled doctor feel helpless. Surging healthcare costs - essentially profit-driven practice of medicine - adds to the belief that doctors are unethical and value money over lives.

Nevertheless, these reasons do not, in any way, justify the corporal retribution meted out to doctors. Simply because violence is never the answer.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ENFORCING CODE WHITE

There's one thing I've long noticed as a practising doctor - the lack of standardized emergency codes in Indian hospitals. Each hospital may follow its own internal colour codes - Code Blue being the most used and most famous code - intended for revival of patients who become rapidly unresponsive - mostly due to cardiac arrest. A rapid response team arrives at the scene and ensures that the patient is revived or shifted to ICU for further management.

Code orange in ER means the hospital is preparing to receive mass casualties. Code Pink indicates a missing or abducted child - triggers immediate lockdown of all exits, staff alert and CCTV monitoring to prevent anyone from leaving the premises with a child. Code Black is activated in some large tertiary care hospitals in response to a security threat in the hospital premises.

In many Western countries, especially the US and Canada, "Code White" is a standardized hospital emergency alert that signals violence, aggression or threat to staff safety - usually triggered when a patient, bystander or outsider becomes physically or verbally abusive. The code instantly mobilizes a trained Code White team - comprising security personnel, senior staff, sometimes even police - to de-escalate the situation safely. However in India, this system is largely absent, unknown or inconsistent across hospitals.

India has no single, government-mandated hospital emergency code system. The NABH gives broad guidelines for safety but doesn't mandate a specific alert system like "Code White." Hospital administrations may also hesitate to raise formal alarms, fearing negative publicity and media backlash. Violence is still seen as a police matter, not a hospital emergency - it is often accepted as part of the job, and this normalization of abuse prevents structural reform. Also most public hospitals are already overburdened and underfunded, making this seem non-essential despite the risks.

THE WAY OUT

The solution to this, if you ask me, is the strict enforcement of law and order even inside the premises of a hospital. Such incidents must be treated as internal emergencies and the implementation of "Code White" must be a staple in such cases, without further thought of public distraught and media attention.

Doctors race to save lives under Code Blue - it's time the system raced to save them under Code White.