Long waiting times, brief appointments and a lack of quality care and attention have led some patients to seek "a life for a life," attacking doctors and hospital staff who they believe have wronged them or their loved ones.
In one of the most notorious attacks, a teenager fatally stabbed an intern and injured three others at a hospital in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang province, last March.
It is a stark departure from the ideal situation in which "doctors and patients become battle companions and stay in the same trench, fighting their common enemies," said neurosurgeon Zhou Liangfu from Huashan Hospital, which is affiliated with Fudan University.
Peng Yuwen, a professor at the Shanghai Medical College of Fudan University, said doctor-patient tensions can erode medical workers' morale and their willingness to take risks.
"Risk-taking is the most noble trait of a doctor, while tensions between doctors and patients can only create overcautious doctors, which in turn does harm to the patients," Peng said.
"If doctors don't dare to take risks when the patients are in a critical moment of life or death, it means they are giving the patients up," he said.
Medical students and rookie medical practitioners are weighing their options, swaying between staying or leaving.
As a doctor who still conducts clinical rotations in Beijing, doctor Li Yifu earns a monthly salary of less than 3,000 yuan (about 480 U.S. dollars).
Residential building collapses in E China's Ningbo
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