Turkey: Violence Against Doctors Reaches Epidemic Levels

Being a doctor in Turkey carries with it a certain amount of prestige. But, increasingly, the job is also proving to be one that comes with a high level of danger. The last month has seen a string of violent attacks against doctors and health professionals in Turkey, from the murder of a doctor by the 17-year-old relative of a patient of his who died to attacks against ambulance crews that were accused of arriving late. Things have gotten so bad that Turkish doctors went on a nationwide strike earlier this month to protest the violence they are facing, while the Health and Justice ministries have been forced to step into action and come up with a plan to protect the country's medical workers.So what's behind this upsurge in violence against doctors? Some suggest that because of a recent expansion of universal health coverage in Turkey, the country is now facing a severe shortage of doctors, resulting in poorer care and more angry patients and relatives. Some doctors, on the other hand, believe that they are the victims of government rhetoric that they say portrays them as lazy elitists. Reports the Financial Times:

Many doctors blame Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, for going out of his way to cast them as the villains of the piece. Mr Erdogan relishes fights with Turkey’s old elites, and despite his party’s Islamist roots, many observers say its popularity over almost a decade in office is at least much the product of the prime minister’s identification with the underdog as of any religious affiliation.
The result, doctors say, is what sometimes can feel like open contempt for them from patients with unrealistic expectations.
“Doctors are portrayed as nasty, the health ministry creates an image of being on the people’s side against the doctors,” says a brain surgeon in Ankara. He and others say that patients are constantly invited to make formal complaints and then subjected to overcrowded hospitals that are the government’s, not doctors’, fault.
Ayse, a doctor in an Istanbul state hospital who like many others does not want to give her full name, recalls an incident last week where a patient headbutted a hospital worker, shouting: “This is how you beat a doctor,” because his appointment was rescheduled after he was late.
“People hear about these things, it makes them more angry. And then they say: ‘I can hit a doctor too’,” she says.

Plans for alleviating the shortage of doctors have actually led to disagreements between the government and the medical establishment. Many Turkish medical associations, as well as some opposition parties in parliament, opposed a recently issued government decree that allows for the hiring of foreign doctors and nurses, charging it will open the door for the hiring of "cheap" medical labor.