Free Prita Mulyasari

I took the banner from this blog. I'm joining the cause to free Ibu Prita as I think it is important to keep freedom of speech.

There are some notes that we should take as a lesson from this case. Notes that would probably asked netizen to be more careful in writing out their complaints, not for being afraid to be sued like Ibu Prita, but to keep in mind that we are also prone to make mistakes. If we are the doctor whose name happened to be mentioned in a complaint letter published in the internet like that, wouldn't it ruin our future career? It could happened to anybody, not only to doctors, but to politician, to teachers (like the one I've mentioned in this post), to architects, to journalists, or to other professions. Young doctor could have his/her career terminated because of our emotional reaction.

I've seen the different effect coming from unedited letter to the edited version. Yet, as a costumer and as a citizen, I feel that Ibu Prita has the right to be angry. She was probably writing out her letter because she was not informed sufficiently by the hospital about her illness.

Lots of interesting articles shown both in the printed media and in the cyber space. I like the opinion from a medical record administrator printed in daily Kompas (Tuesday, 9 June 2009), "Prita, Apa Salahmu?". The medical record (or Dokumen Rekam Medis/DRM) is actually paid by the patient, and belong to the patient (family). As a costumer we have the right to have the copy of the medical record. Keeping a medical record to the hospital is something common here. Not only OMNI Hospital did it. A friend of mine was forced to lie that she was going back to Germany to get her medical record copy released by a private hospital in Jakarta. But, it was a long time ago, may be it is not happen anymore there (hopefully).

The opinion article gave us more insight on what should happened, and how it create the misunderstanding between patient and the hospital.

The basic foundation of relation is always TRUST. If the patient trust the doctor and the hospital, and the hospital (and doctors) trust the patient as their potential costumer in the future, then we can minimize communication problem. If the hospital treats its patient as a human being who deserves explanation of what was happening, then the letter would probably never written.

There are a lot of notes that I noted from this case; the freedom of speech, the costumer right of good service, the judicial procedure, the education sector, marketing effect, and also about citizen journalism (or at least about editorial of a blog post or an article). I hope I have time to talk about it next time. With the school vacation starting tomorrow I can't make any promise right now...