Research On Public Crisis Management Of Medical Disputes In Transitional China

With Chinese society walking into a transition period, rapidly increasing social risks lead to an outburst of public crisis. In the medical industry, labeled with high technology and high risk, medical services inevitably turn into one type of the public crisis, i.e. medical disputes, in a great deal and to a great extent. Public crisis in recent years pushes medical dispute into the focus of public eyes. We have seen that exaggerated media coverage has contributed in destroying the trust between medical institutes and patients, which makes medical disputes even more difficult to solve and fix, lack of administrative management system keeps discussion on resolution on theoretical level rather than on practical level, and blind blame on medical service quality and attitude works out nothing without the guidance of crisis management theory. The outburst of medical disputes in social transition background is the result of a number of causes, including an in-transition and high risk society, lack of supervision, immature responding mechanism, losing of public faith, intense doctor-patient relationship. The relevant government authorities should do a thorough and reasonable thinking on how to cope with medical disputes, figure out the relationship between government, medical institute, media and public, rebuild crisis responding mechanism, to safeguard the heath right of citizens and to set up the corresponding supervision system. This article is aimed to call for the attention on medical dispute crisis management, and to provide advice on how to develop medical dispute crisis responding mechanism, and for reference by the government authority in enhancing its ability in manage medical dispute crisis and safeguarding the heath right of citizens. Given that there is no unified national level comprehensive medical dispute crisis responding mechanism, the information collection process mainly depends interview and case study, and the analysis methodology adopts induction, etc.This article has five chapters. Chapter I is a brief introduction on the background, current status and content of research on medical dispute crisis management in transitional China. Chapter II proposes the meaning, characteristics and theoretical basis for transaction period, medical dispute and crisis management by defining medical dispute crisis management in transitional China. Chapter III discusses the in-depth reasons, including lack of supervision, immature responding mechanism, losing of public faith, intense relationship between medical institutes and patients, which act together causing the outburst of medical dispute crisis incidents, by pointing out the facts such as lack of legislation, inefficiency in pre-alarm and rapid responding ability, low capability in dealing with social situation and undeveloped information disclosure system and detailed analysis on some cases. Chapter IV introduces the successful patterns of medical dispute crisis management in other contraries, such as USA, Australia and Japan and does a comparison study against the current status of China. Chapter V discusses on how to develop the medical dispute crisis management in China based on the previous analysis and concludes the article by putting forward the author's idea, pointing to the weak points in the current status, i.e. (i) to have a better understanding on medical dispute crisis management in transitional China; (ii) to develop the system and legislation of medical dispute crisis management; (iii) to rebuild the relationship between government, media and public in medical dispute crisis management; (iv) to set up specific crisis management agency for medical dispute; (v) to emphasis on training of medical professional and citizens regarding their mindset and ability in coping with medical dispute crisis; (vi) to develop a reasonable compensation system in all parties'interest.