Treatment of a Fellow Doctor in a Public Sector Hospital: Ethnographic Study of Collegial Professionalism

Abstract

Ethics and collegiality in medical profession requires a doctor to treat fellow professional as brother and sister. Ethnography was employed to study the status of collegiality in public sector hospital, where an ailing doc-tor sought clinical care from a physician. The former, on account of the latter’s cold reception and behaviour, reacted with his blood pressure shooting-up. The communication gap led the ailing doctor, who com-plied by coming to the laboratory, was perturbed, making him firstly unfit and later decided not to undergo the prescribed test. While Pakistan Medical and Dental Council have the responsibility to oversee, the under-graduate medical education and training should also lay greater emphasis on ethics in medical practice and healthy collegiality in the medical profession.