HEALERS ARE NOT TRADERS…..

 

                                            https://www.instagram.com/indian__law_firm
 

 

HEALERS ARE NOT TRADERS…..

INTRODUCTION

Medical science is not exact. Every doctor knows this, accepts this, and lives with this reality every single day. If medicine were exact, textbooks would be enough and patients would heal uniformly. But medicine doesn’t work that way. It never has.

 

Most of the time, we begin treatment empirically. Not because we are careless, but because waiting for perfect clarity can cost a life. Many conditions simply do not come with neat, universally accepted treatment protocols. Even when protocols exist, no two patients respond in the same way to the same drug. One improves, another deteriorates, and a third surprises you altogether. Outcomes differ, despite identical intent and effort.

 

That is why treatment in medicine is and must be individualised. Tailor-made. Context-specific. There is no “one size fits all” in medical practice, no matter how much the law or public discourse may wish it were so.

 

Medicine as It Is Practiced, Not as It Is Imagined

 

What also needs to be said again and again is this, most doctors in India do not practice in ideal conditions. Far from it.

 

Our health facilities are often ill-equipped. Basic infrastructure is missing in many places. Equipment doesn’t work. Drugs are unavailable or delayed. Staff shortages are routine, not exceptional. Those who are supposed to address these systemic issues often don’t, or can’t, or simply won’t.

 

India’s health budget remains far below that of many developing countries, leave alone developed ones. This is not a political statement; it is a factual one. In this environment, doctors are expected to deliver world-class outcomes with third-world resources.

 

So yes, most of the time, doctors are not just fighting disease. They are fighting the system while fighting disease.

 

Working Against Time

 

Nowhere is this more evident than in emergencies. Emergency medicine is brutal. Decisions are taken in minutes. Sometimes seconds. There is no luxury of hindsight, no time for prolonged discussions, no room for legal caution. The golden hour is not a phrase coined for textbooks, it is something we feel acutely in emergency rooms.

 

When a patient arrives gasping for breath, bleeding, unconscious, or crashing, you act. You do what you believe is right, with the information you have at that moment. You act knowing very well that later, someone will analyse that decision calmly, sitting comfortably, with complete information and unlimited time.

 

That difference between acting in real time and judging in hindsight is rarely acknowledged.

 

The Doctor as the Convenient Target

 

No doctor worth his salt harms his patient deliberately. Who would want to destroy years of training, hard work, and professional reputation? Doctors traditionally believed that a satisfied patient brings ten more. Trust was the foundation of medical practice.

But today, that trust is eroding.

 

There are so many uncertainties in diagnosis, treatment protocols, drug action, and individual patient response that even a well-managed case can go wrong. Add to this spurious drugs, substandard implants, faulty equipment, delayed investigations, and inadequate support systems and the pitch is well and truly queered.

 

Yet, when things go wrong, the doctor is the easiest person to blame. He is visible. Accessible. Tangible. Everyone else in the chain remains conveniently invisible.

 

Suppliers of drugs? Rarely questioned.

Manufacturers of faulty equipment? Almost never.

Administrators who failed to provide infrastructure? Forgotten.

 

The entire burden of guilt is pushed onto the doctor standing at the end of this long, broken chain.

 

This does not mean doctors never make mistakes. They do. But in most cases, these are unintentional lapses, born out of complexity rather than negligence.

 

Consumer Protection Act and the Doctor’s Dilemma

 

Against this background, the continued inclusion of doctors under the Consumer Protection Act (CPA) causes deep anguish within the medical community.

 

The Supreme Court’s recent stance reaffirming the 1995 IMA v. V.P. Shantha judgment and dismissing review petitions in late 2024 and early 2025 has once again made it clear that doctors remain within the ambit of the CPA. Legally consistent, perhaps. But practically and ethically troubling.

 

When every patient starts appearing like a potential litigant, medical care changes. Doctors begin practising defensive medicine. Tests are ordered not because they are necessary, but because they are legally safer. High-risk cases are referred elsewhere. Emergencies are deferred.

 

Not because doctors don’t care but because the cost of an adverse outcome has become unbearable.

 

Here is the cruel irony, the very law meant to protect patients may end up harming them. Delayed treatment, refusal to handle emergencies, excessive referrals all these cost lives.

 

The Curious Case of Lawyers

 

What makes this even harder to digest is the recent exclusion of lawyers from the Consumer Protection Act, citing the “unique nature” of the legal profession.

This makes strange reading.

 

If doctors whose primary role is to save lives can be treated as service providers under consumer law, why not advocates? 

A lawyer may know his client is guilty and still argue. He may win on technical grounds. A guilty person may walk free, or an innocent may be punished.

Yet, the apex court views this differently.

 

I am not arguing against lawyers. I am arguing against selective logic.

 

If accountability is the principle, it must be applied fairly. If professional complexity is the defence, then medicine surely qualifies. The biggest casualty of this legal approach is trust.

 

The doctor patient relationship cannot survive in an atmosphere of fear and suspicion. Medicine works best when patients trust doctors and doctors feel secure enough to act decisively.

 

Defensive Medicine and Its Fallout

 

Today, avoidable litigation consumes enormous time and mental energy. Doctors spend hours in courts instead of hospitals. They practise with one eye on the patient and the other on possible legal consequences.

 

In the long run, everyone suffers patients, doctors, institutions, and society.

 

A Need to Rethink Accountability

 

This is not a plea for immunity. Doctors must be accountable. Ethics must be upheld. Negligence must be punished.

 

But accountability must be contextual, sensitive to the realities of medical practice. Medicine cannot be judged like a commercial transaction. Hospitals are not shops. Healing is not a commodity.

 

What we need is either a specialised medical accountability framework or clear legislative clarification under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019   one that distinguishes negligence from adverse outcomes and protects good-faith medical practice.

 

In the End

 

We doctors work against time, uncertainty, and scarcity. Often exhausted. Often under-resourced. Yet we continue to show up at odd hours, on holidays, in emergencies because lives depend on it.

 

To treat life-savers as traders, while exempting other professionals, reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of medicine.

 

If this continues unchecked, we will create a healthcare system where fear replaces courage and delay replaces decisiveness.  When that happens, the price will not be paid in courtrooms.

It will be paid in lives…..

Dr. VKV Prasad

1/3 LLB

Pendekanti law College