Medical ethics, duties & medical negligence awareness among the practitioners in a teaching medical college, hospital-A survey.

There is Growing public awareness regarding the ethical conduct of medical practitioners, and complaints against physicians appear to be escalating. The changing doctor-patient relationship and commercialization of modern medical practice has affected the practice of medicine. This study aimed to assess the knowledge of, and attitudes to, medical ethics among doctors in the Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS), Bhubaneswar, Orissa. A self-administered structured questionnaire was distributed to all doctors; a total 120 numbers of practitioners of various clinical departments participated. 90% of the total participants were well aware about medico legal cases. All the participants advocated for an ethical practice but 12% of them practice as per the demand of the situation.68% of the participants expressed that dichotomy should not be a part of medical practice. Only 52% of the respondents are aware of the MCI code of medical ethics 2002 and 57% knows the role of ethical committee in their institute. Majority, 88% of them expressed that 15 days duty in the department of Forensic Medicine should be mandatory during internship to handle the medico legal cases properly.

Sociodemographic profile of poisoning cases.

Acute poisoning is an important medical emergency and one of the causes of death. A thorough knowledge of the profile of the victim is essential for management and prevention of poisoning. The present paper evaluates pattern of poisoning cases including deaths over a period of two years from 1999 to 2001 in Berhampur, Orissa. 53.3% of the cases were male with male to female ratio 1.14:1. Peak incidence was observed in the age group 21-30 years(124 cases). More than four-fifth of the cases belonged to medium socioeconomic status and 58.1% cases were from rural areas. Majority of the victims were literate and married outnumbered the unmarried cases. Occurrence of poisoning was more common in day time and during Summer season. Organophosphate compounds was the most commonly (22.9%) abused substance. Based on these findings preventive measures like restriction of sale and strengthening the legislature on availability of poison, promoting poison information center etc have been put forward.