Court clerk detained over allegedly beating doctor, nurse

A court clerk from central China's Hubei Province was put under administrative detention over suspectedly beating a doctor and a nurse, local authorities said Tuesday.

According to the local police, Qin Mingcheng from the Court of Maojian District was put under detention for ten days and fined 200 yuan (about 32 U.S. dollars) after he injured a female doctor and a nurse on Saturday when his wife died at the People's Hospital of Shiyan City despite five days of treatment.

A local media report said the doctor suffered an orbital fracture, and eyesight and hearing damage.

The Court of Maojian District announced in a statement on Tuesday that Qin was dissatisfied with the rescue work and beat a doctor and a nurse who participated in the rescue "under rage".

The incident fanned the flames of already tensioned doctor-patient relations in China after it was widely circulated on China's microblog Sina Weibo.

"As a court clerk, he deliberately broke the law. Emotional resentment is not a good explanation," a web user named "ekey" wrote on his account.

Despite public fury on the Internet, some others also encouraged people to stay calm. "The doctor-patient conflict is the result of a range of factors including poor communication, uneven distribution of medical resources and incomplete legal mechanism for handling the matter," read another comment on Weibo.

According to the National Health and Family Planning Commission, the country reported 115,000 medical disputes in 2014, a decline of 8.7 percent over 2013. But the problem is still serious and often leads to tragedies.

In one of the latest cases, three men beat a pregnant nurse and caused her to miscarry in Gulin County of southwest China's Sichuan Province in January.

Also in January, a drunk man fought with a doctor at a hospital in central China's Henan Province. During the scuffle, an elevator door was opened and the two fell down the shaft and died. Endi