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The Appeal to Doctors and the Stance of the Warsaw Regional Medical Council Chairman of 23rd February 2007 |  |  |  |
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Referring to the recently disclosed so called corruption scandals in departmental hospitals in Warsaw and as the chairman of the Regional Medical Council, in whose area the said events are taking place, I hereby present my stance on the matter.
The self-government of health care service whose main responsibilities include monitoring and supervising duty performance of medical professions, as well as observance of ethic and moral standards in medicine, condemns behaviours contrary to these standards. In all reported cases of that type we have always reacted and taken actions in compliance with the law.
Not tolerating or justifying individual corruptive behaviours, which cannot be identified with the whole medical environment though, we cannot ignore obvious - and present for years - defects of health care service in Poland, which in many cases generate such behaviours.
Imperfect organization of state health care system, its chronic financial problems and wrong political decisions of successive governments have led to the situation in which access to medical services is becoming more and more limited and the sense of threat to health safety in Poland is increasing. Many years of waiting for planned surgeries and long queues to specialists result in worse treatment effects, irrespective of doctors efforts.
On multiple occasions, with no success though, we have proposed implementing system changes, which would influence the situation positively and limit considerably possibilities of corruptive acts. Its not by chance that similar cases do not happen in private sector of medical services. Undoubtedly their occurance in public sector is influenced by degradingly low earnings there.
"Precipitate and premature passing sentences (...), using initial findings of an investigation for the purpose of political propaganda (...) may lead to transgression of rules of a law-observing state and human rights violation" - reads the Helsinki Committee declaration. The way in which spectacular arrests of the doctors were carried out and some statements of government members (Quotation.: "There have been actions, which fall into a category of crime. "This man will not take anybodys life any more.") may imply that this is aimed at discrediting medical environment.
This fact is extremely dangerous, whereas one of the basic elements in a relation between a patient and a doctor is trust of the former to the latter. How many of the sick, having heard from the Minister of Justice unjustified (because with no court judgment) information about a doctor-murderer, will not come to the doctor in time or give up vital treatment?
The way, in which secret service have been operating recently, for example in the circles of doctors dealing with taking organs from the dead for later transplantations, and imputing foul motives to the ones whose job is to identify and look after potential organ donors, will undoubtedly bring considerable decrease in number of transplant surgeries in Poland. As a consequence a lot of patients will die. Right now we are observing visible decline in the number of organs taken from the dead donors.
It is not by chance, either, that all these events are being publicized before a planned for spring protest action of doctors, fairly demanding a pay rise.
I appeal to all doctors to report to Regional Medical Chamber in Warsaw all cases of complications or deaths among patients which are directly connected with defective organisation and undercapitalization of public health care service in Poland. Lets present "The Black Book" of faults in health care system in our country to the Polish authorities. Let it force the decision-makers to immediate changes in the organisation of health care system (whose essence, actually, has not changed since the times of communism in Poland) to improve health situation of Polish people and eliminate mechanisms conducive to pathologies!
MD Andrzej Włodarczyk