Bihar: Junior doctors seek revocation of COVID- facility status of medical colleges
Bihar: The junior doctors of Bihar have urged the authorities to revoke the COVID-19 facility status of Patna, Gaya, and Bhagalpur Medical College and hospitals due to the lack of patients and have also requested the authorities to allow admission of non-COVID patients.
Most of these junior doctors are postgraduate medical students and are pursuing their internships. However, turning the medical colleges as COVID facility will hamper their learning process as they will not get the chance of treating patients of different diseases which might cause an academic loss for them, they have stated.
Hindusthan Times reports that the members of the Junior Doctors Association, Bihar have submitted a letter to the principal secretary, health of Bihar on Monday stating that it will be impossible for the medicos to complete their proper medical training fulfilling the goals of the training in a hospital if they are employed only for COVID-19 patients.
Dr. Safi, one of the PG medicos at NMCH told Hindusthan times that "Doctors with incomplete training can cause a serious threat to the patients they treat. No law of the land gives anybody the right to do so. If these incompletely trained doctors cause any damage to a patient after they pass out, the authorities must be held responsible for hampering their training for all these months."
The letter further extensively quoted the Regulations of Postgraduate Education, 2000 of the Medical Council of India (MCI). The letter stated that "designating medical colleges as exclusive Covid-19 care hospitals should be the last resort and not the first option. Non-teaching hospitals should be engaged first ".
The junior doctors association further stated that due to converting the medical college hospitals as COVID facilities, a number of specialists are also rendered useless. However, considering the importance of the availability of COVID treatment, they have suggested that the Guru Gobind Singh hospital in Patna which has 110 beds and 6 intensive care beds should be given the status of a dedicated COVID-19 hospital after providing it necessary infrastructure.
Dr. Papu Kumar Safi and Dr. Divyanshu Martand of Nalanda Medical College Hospital (NMCH) have also supported the claims of the junior doctors and suggested that admitting COVID patients in the facility must be withheld for the time being while they ensured that they will continue treating the patients who have already been admitted in the hospital.
HT adds that among almost 4,000 beds kept for COVID-19 patients in different government hospitals only 600 beds are occupied. The state government has previously designated AIIMS and NMCH as COVID-19 hospitals. Moreover, Narayan Magadh medical College hospital in Gaya and Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College hospital in Bhagalpur have also been converted into COVID facilities. JDA members also stated that while the total bed capacity is 447 in NMCH, it has not been occupied by more than 50 patients at a time. A similar situation was reportedly seen in other facilities also. Hence it is for the best to de-notify the government order designating all these medical colleges as COVID facilities.
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