Amritsar: Often facing backlash from relatives in cases of unexpected death of a patient, private hospitals here have started raising their own 'force' to prevent incidents of thrashing of doctors and vandalizing of hospital property. What's more, a few doctors have also secretively hired bouncers for their personal security."Violence in private hospitals mostly takes place when a patient dies unexpectedly or even after a lengthy and expensive treatment," said director of cardiology at Fortis Hospital's Dr Arun Chopra.Talking to TOI on Thursday he advocated adequate security arrangements in private hospitals. "There should be absolute zero tolerance for violent behaviour of relatives in hospitals," he said."A strong legal action that gets enforced promptly can bring a sense of security among medical fraternity," he said adding that in recent past there had been three major incidents of violence against doctors in Amritsar alone.Generally, patients grouse' against doctors is about medical negligence but in the majority of cases, deaths occur due to the complication of disease, he added.Amandeep Hospital's Dr Avtar Singh said his hospital had its own personnel who form a human chain around the relatives of patients when they observe situation slipping out of hand."We have CCTV camera's installed in all the nook and corners of hospital which are monitored round the clock and as soon as we find unexpected gathering of relatives of patients or someone going berserk, our security force forms a human chain around them to prevent them from misbehaving with doctors or vandalizing the hospital property," he added.About 10 days ago Amandeep Hospital had come under attack by angry relatives of a patient who had died. Avtar said one of the main reason of attack on doctors and hospital was that patients didn't have medical insurance cover.Dr H S Nagpal of Hartej Hospital said that they hired private security but it only helped regulate the patient's flow. Private security personnel worked as a psychological deterrent in case of situation turning ugly, they were not permitted to use force. He said that only stricter legal punishment for those attacking doctors and damaging hospitals was the answer to the problem.President of Amritsar chapter of Indian Medical Association (IMA) Dr Sukhjit Singh said that the body had told all the doctors and private hospitals to alert the Nursing Home Cell of IMA in such a situation. The cell circulates the message among IMA members, who immediately rush to the affected private hospital to control the situation.A private doctor who didn't want to be named said that he had hired two bouncers who remain round the clock in his hospital. "Police reach after the incident but by then a lot of damage is already done both to doctors and to property. I have instructed bouncers not to hit anyone but only to prevent the aggressive crowd from causing any damage," he said.

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