Kolkata hospital horror: State appeals to junior doctors to resume work amid safety concerns
Times of India | 14 August 2024
RG Kar Medical College KOLKATA: The state on Tuesday, appealed to the agitating junior doctors across the state to return to work and treat patients at the earliest while assuring that the state was taking all steps to ensure proper safety and security of the doctors at work.
Speaking to reporters, Narayan Swaroop Nigam, the state principal health secretary, said: "The state govt condemns this gruesome incident and we assure that proper investigation will be carried out in this case.However, it is also seen that in the last few days patient services have been badly affected across the state in many hospitals due to absence of resident doctors at OPDs as well as at emergency departments."
Addressing a media conference at Swasthya Bhavan at Salt Lake Sector V, Nigam said although senior doctors and doctors from paramedic department are providing emergency and OPD services, there are still complaints of patients being turned down at different hospitals.
"We are still receiving complaints from patients regarding non-availability of timely emergency treatment at some hospitals. It is our appeal to the resident doctors to return to their services considering the commitment shown by the state towards the case as well as towards ensuring the safety and security of resident doctors," said Nigam.
TOI has been writing since Saturday how patients services have taken a hit at all major government hospitals in the city and the state since the junior doctors went on a cease-work, demanding justice in the brutal rape and murder of the young doctor on duty at R G Kar and proper steps for safety of other young doctors and staff on the hospital premises.
There are 21 govt medical colleges in the state where there are 17,000-odd senior doctors on roll. Most of them spend majority of their duty hours in teaching and supervising jobs. Hence, treatment of patients at outdoor patients department, emergency and indoor wards at night mostly rest on 6,000-odd post-graduate trainees and around 5,000 senior resident doctors.
The city has five medical colleges that teach undergraduate as well as postgraduate doctors. With the junior doctors on cease-work, patient services at OPDs and indoor units, where there are around 1,000 to 2,000 patients in each hospital on any given day, are taking a hit because of the unrest.
While charting out a list of actions taken by the state in the case, Nigam said: "The govt respects the dignity of state's medical professionals in the highest order and we request that normalcy in patient services be restored immediately for the welfare of the public of the state."