How well do you know your Physician? Are you really safe in the hospitals?

The healthcare system is one of the most sensitive industries that function within a country. It bears a significant consequence in the lives of the citizens and therefore, any form of negligence can result in repercussions that might be beyond mitigations.

While the majority of the doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers are qualified to facilitate the service across the globe, there are stray cases where health workers have resorted to unfair means, resulting in fatal consequences. These are crimes that probably will never find the stature of murder, however, the nature of it remains the same. One such case is cited below:

REMDESIVIR CASE, 2021

• Myrusu police station
• April 20, 2021
• IPC 302, 1208- murder &criminal conspiracy
• Vials of Remdesivir were filled with saline water and paracetamol
• Sold to 900 desperate Covid patients who were struggling for their lives
• Racket busted of smugglers and black-marketers selling the anti-viral drug
• A nurse working in a private hospital in Mysuru’s Vidhya Nagar locality was identified
• This resulted in the gross negligence and deterioration in the health conditions of these patients
• Example of lack of ethical, moral binding on employees in sensitive professions such as these

Considering the above-cited case, we understand that it is not a one-off situation. Cases like these have taken place in the past and continue to happen these days as frauds, posing as doctors, trying to write the medical entrances or find employment in the health sector, forging certificates and marksheets, or manipulating the power they have been bestowed with by the authority.

Some of the reasons why Pre-Employment Background Verification is crucial for the health sector are:

1. Firstly, there are drug abusers who get into the pharmacological industries and gain access to uncharted drugs that can be misused by them in smuggling. Some pharmacists, who are addicts themselves, can start abusing as well, which definitely will hamper their competence at work.
2. Proper collateral needs to be kept and the actions of the employees must be regulated for which verification is vital. It will minimize the chances of bias, nepotism or favoritism.
3. Mishandling of critical patients resulting in fatal consequences also comes under the purview of lack of proper training and incompetence.
4. A comprehensive background check of the healthcare workers along with their previous associations can help substantiate the behavioral record and pattern of the concerned health workers which enables a clearer view about them.
5. Medical practitioners should follow certain norms that are updated regularly and monitored to ensure they do not give in to certain pharmaceutical companies and their alluring offers. The authorities must ensure a consistent verification process to help reduce these behaviors.
6. The affiliations of the universities and the medical practitioner’s licenses must be verified thoroughly to avoid fraud entering the system and intruding into the confidential database of public health.
7. While a doctor can save a life, they also have access to drugs that can kill one. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to ensure the mental health and behavior of a doctor. Before hiring, the employers must conduct a psychometric test along with drug tests to check if the prospective employee has any such inclination.
8. If a medical practitioner is suffering from any serious ailment or addiction, which can affect the patient or his competence at work, it is imperative for the employers to conduct an exhaustive medical check on every employee before hiring to avoid such incidents.
9. There have been occurrences in the past where female patients or children have been subjected to sexual abuse by a health-worker. This has not only brought immense shame to the industry but also questioned the security within the premises of the hospitals. It is only after such incidents that hospitals have started taking stringent precautions and implemented rules to keep a check on the employees and their actions.

While the world moves on, with smarter technologies and software to assist them, pharmaceutical industries have become the subject of white-collar crimes with the looming globalization and digitization. While the world fights against Covid and health-workers selflessly continue striving each day to save our lives, an extensive background check becomes important in such an industry which deals with human lives on a daily basis, and any amount of slight laxity and cost heavily if not taken care of in due time.