A number of recent cases of violence against medical staff have underscored this long-standing problem as authorities struggle to prevent tensions between patients and doctors. On Wednesday, a doctor at Chaozhou Central Hospital in south China's Guangdong Province was forced into a public parade by the relatives of a patient whose life he failed to save. There has been a slew of similar headline-making incidents in which patients threaten, humiliate or harm doctors. Earlier tis month, a couple who were both government officials were punished for beating and paralysing a nurse at the Nanjing Stomatological Hospital in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province. In February, a doctor from northeast China's Heilongjiang Province was beaten to death by a patient with a blunt bar over unsatisfactory treatment.