Healthcare workers deserve to be treated with respect beyond times of crisis

For the past several months, people in Singapore have rallied behind our healthcare workers, especially those working in public healthcare institutions.

This show of support has ranged from monetary awards and applause to the provision of free meals. 

While these gestures are appreciated and well-deserved, it is an unspoken truth that our healthcare workers are driven not by a desire for praise, but by an innate sense of duty.

Dr Adina Luba Kalet, director of the Kern Institute for the Transformation of Medical Education at the Medical College of Wisconsin in the United States, was quoted in a New York Times commentary last month saying that “doctors are taught to run into the fire and not away from it”.

Yet doctors, and by extension all healthcare workers, are not immune from the adverse effects of stress arising from their work. Last month, a top emergency physician in New York who had been on the front line of the Covid-19 outbreak died by suicide.

Twice in the span of 17 years, Singapore’s healthcare workers have rallied and stepped unflinchingly into the gap even when they face great danger to their lives.

And yet, from the outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003 until now, when we are in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, healthcare workers — particularly those in our public healthcare institutions — are frequently treated with disrespect. They also face often-capricious demands from patients and family members. 

These range from unreasonable calls to alter discharge arrangements for personal convenience to requests for investigations deemed not to be clinically necessary as well as demands for family members to be updated daily beyond normal working hours so as to suit the convenience of relatives.

Members of the public, patients and their families may claim that they are laypersons, and it is natural for them to be worried when they are ill and that they should be entitled to their requests.

I would counter that public healthcare institutions are there to provide an essential service, and healthcare providers were already working under stressful and demanding circumstances before the Covid-19 crisis.

It will not take much for patients and relatives to approach them with respect, courtesy and consideration. More often than not, healthcare workers are browbeaten into submitting to unreasonable demands so as to avoid having to reply to complaints, which unfortunately remain a performance indicator in many public institutions.

Such behaviour has become commonplace, perhaps because of an unfettered sense of entitlement on the part of the public. There is a need for our health authorities to temper the expectations of our population with regard to healthcare delivery and empower our healthcare workers to exercise judgment in accordance with their training.

It is not enough to laud our healthcare workers only in our nation’s hour of need. They deserve our continued support and respect.

ABOUT THE WRITER:

Dr Sitoh Yih Yiow, who was once in public healthcare, is a geriatrician in private practice.

Have views on this issue or a news topic you care about? Send your letter to voices [at] mediacorp.com.sg with your full name, address and phone number.