Thousands of doctors, nurses, health care workers and hospital employees took to the streets of Guadalajara and 70 other Mexican towns and cities Sunday to demand that medical malpractice be disqualified as a criminal offense.
Galvanized by a emerging social media movement called #YoSoy17, the medics voiced their support for 16 colleagues facing prison time following the death of a 15-year-old boy at the IMSS Pediatric Hospital in Guadalajara four and a half years ago.
Doctors say those who are given the task of judging cases of medical negligence should defer to “scientific opinion” and final reports prepared by specialists in appropriate fields and not the arguments of lawyers.
The doctors stress they are not seeking to avoid being made accountable for negligence or incompetence but simply demanding a fairer form of justice. “This fight is not against our patients; this is to help them,” read one banner. “If we mistrust each other, no one will benefit.”
The movement has also sought to raise supplementary issues that doctors say make working conditions in the public health care sector intolerable.
A major concern is the prioritization of cost reduction at the expense of quality treatment and investment in equipment, coupled with a sharp rise in the numbers of patients demanding services.
The medical movement also criticized the government’s policy of signing up large numbers of citizens to the Seguro Popular program and sending them to public facilities ill-equipped to handle sudden intakes of new patients.
“It’s time doctors received dignified treatment and the salaries we deserve. Our productivity should be measured in lives saved not the number of patients we see,” said Eugenio Sánchez Ramírez, one of the leaders of #Yosoy17.
Of the 16 Jalisco doctors found guilty of negligence and facing jail time, Sánchez Ramírez said: “They should get a new trial that includes an exhaustive scientific revision of the facts carried out by heath experts with experience in each one of the subspecialties.”
The Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS) is financing the defense of the doctors incriminated in the death of Roberto Gallardo Rodríguez, a 15-year-old asthmatic who succumbed to an infection of the intestine in January 2010 after spending 55 days in hospital.
After many failed attempts to take the case to court, the boy’s father, Sergio Gallardo Ramos, eventually found a judge willing to listen to his complaints, which included accusations that doctors had failed to carry out tests that would have correctly diagnosed his son’s condition and enabled them to prescribe a treatment leading to his recovery.
Gallardo Ramos said the marches were designed “to intimidate the judge,” and compared them to the “narco-blockades” ordered by drug cartel leaders to create mass panic amongst the public. He claimed many of Sunday’s protestors were “forced” by their superiors to participate in the marches.
Gallardo Ramos said he would be presenting further evidence to the judge, whom he expects to hand down a definitive sentence within two months.
He said he was urged by supporters to hold a counter march but dismissed the idea, saying it would be wrong to engage in such tactics. He said his major aim in bringing the case of his son’s death to court was to “improve service at the IMSS.”
Gallardo Ramos said: “Everyone knows that in almost every Mexican family there is a member who has been the victim of a (negligent) IMSS doctor.”
Following Sunday’s protest, several Jalisco legislators promised to submit an initiative to Congress to modify state health law to accede with doctors’ demands that specialists evaluate the validity of medical negligence cases.
“The judges need to be professional people who know how doctors treat patients, not people who sit behind desks and do not know these institutions,” said Elías Íñiguez, a doctor and president of the Hygiene and Public Health Commission of the State Congress.
Many cases of presumed medical malpractice are initially dealt with by the Comisión Nacional de Arbitraje Médico (National Medical Arbitration Commission or Conamed), which seeks to find a solution between the parties without lawyers becoming involved.
Many patients, however, say this system is too heavily weighted toward the medical profession and find little or no satisfaction from the arbitrators. (It is quite common for doctors to fail to turn up for appointments with the arbitration committee.) Despite the protestations of doctors, taking a case of medical negligence successfully through the criminal justice system is an expensive process that rarely occurs in Mexico.