Fear In The Emergency Room

As trust breaks down between caregivers and the public, hospitals are turning into places of fear instead of healing.

- Dr. Rizwan Roomi

At Government Medical College (GMC) Jammu, the emergency ward is always loud. Monitors beep, stretchers roll in, and voices rise with panic or prayer. But on July 16, that signature shrill shifted.

After a critically-ill patient died, his attendants turned their grief into fury. A female postgraduate doctor was kicked in the abdomen. Her colleague was also attacked. It was all caught on CCTV. Within hours, the footage was on every phone in the region.

The next morning, doctors went on strike. Emergency services slowed, surgeries were cancelled, and exhausted consultants were left to hold up a crumbling system.

Then, just a week later, a similar scene unfolded at SMHS Hospital in Srinagar. A doctor was slapped to the ground while doing his job. He was trying to help.

These incidents are not anomalies. They are signals. They tell us something is deeply wrong, with how society is failing the people inside them.

Doctors are seen as privileged. That's the assumption. The truth is different.

In Kashmir’s government hospitals, young doctors routinely work 18 to 20 hours without proper food, rest, or even security. They manage hundreds of patients a day in poorly equipped wards. They face questions they can’t always answer.

And when a life slips away, they are often the first ones blamed. And sometimes, they are assaulted. These assaults don’t happen in a vacuum.