The Delhi government has asked staff and doctors of state-run hospitals and medical institutions to not file police complaints in individual capacity for incidents of abuse or violence by patients or their attendants.
Instead, heads of departments and institutions have been instructed to file FIRs on behalf of staff members immediately after such incidents are reported.
This serves two purposes. First, there will be a preliminary scrutiny to assess the seriousness of the complaint. Second, a complaint from an institution carries more heft than from an individual doctor or staff member. Given the increasing mistrust between patients and medical practitioners, and rising complaints against doctors and by doctors, the experiment could be tried in other states too.