The killing of a dentist by his patient on Friday in Guangzhou, South China, is intolerable, and many local residents gathered in the city's Hero Square to mourn him on Saturday and express their anger at such violence.

Worryingly, this extreme case is just the latest in an increasing number of disputes between medical staff and their patients, in which doctors or nurses have been verbally or physically abused by patients. In some instances when a patient has died, doctors have been coerced to kneel and mourn the patient by relatives and friends of the deceased.

Strict enforcement of the law is urgently needed to protect medical workers from being abused by their patients and patients' relatives in any form. A desirable mechanism also needs to be put in place to strictly assess how much responsibility a doctor has to bear in a dispute.