The End of Patient Abuse In Medical Care
Ian Stevenson, M.D.
If you were to take your automobile to a garage for an adjustment of the carburetor and have it returned with the carburetor working better but with heavy stains on the upholstery, several new dents in the body, and the paint badly marred, you would, I think, be vexed. If you then grumbled about these damages to the garage manager, and he said that was what you should expect when you have your carburetor fixed, your annoyance might well get out of control. Yet something comparable to this can happen to many patients admitted to hospitals today. People have come to tolerate mishandling of themselves in hospitals that they would not allow to happen to their cars in a garage. A patient admitted to a hospital—especially a university or a teaching one—may undergo a variety of extremely noxious experiences; no single one of these may be grave in itself, but taken together—as they must be—they often amount to a serious personal injury. We are gradually learning to check child abuse and wife-beating; now we are also beginning to check
