|
Words of intimidation that start as figures of speech can cast a pall over an environment that already has a built-in susceptibility to extreme language. A few days ago, Wang Mudi, a television host in Guangdong province, accompanied his girlfriend to the hospital. The nurse did an extremely sloppy job putting her on a drip. It took her four attempts to properly inject the needle. All the while she was carrying on a casual conversation with a colleague. Wang was so enraged he wrote on his Sina Weibo account, a Chinese micro blog, that "I felt I wanted to hack someone". The next day, a healthcare industry association demanded he apologize or his employer should sack him. Wang quickly removed his blog post and later issued a lengthy apology. He has a mild disposition, he said, and he did not name the hospital or the nurse in his original post so nobody was hurt by his outburst. It was "on the spur of the moment that I made the wrong remark", he explained. Most online denizens seemed to agree that what Wang did exacerbated China's troubled doctor-patient relations. A recent spate of incidents where patients or their family members resorted to violence and physically harmed members of medical services has raised alarm about the vulnerability of the profession. Previously, however, the media portrayed medical professionals as greedy merchants who coerced bribes from patients. | 
