Admit only serious indoor patient

Recently, on the visit of Shri Gulam Nabi Azad Minister of Health & Family Welfare and president of PGIMER attended the 32rd Convocation of PGIMER and Prof. Yogesh Chawla, Director PGIMER set vision for 2020 and inspired and made tall promises to modernise the P.G.I. and also improvement of patient care and excellence state-of-the art operation theatres falls flat with the recent incident of 16 years old Anupama’s tragic case a resident of Mauli Jagran Complex which was brought to the P.G.I. soon after the accident in Sector-18 and required immediate surgery in the hospital emergency. But acc ording to her parents she was not given timely medical attention had due to delay in surgery she developed gas gangrene spread infection in to the entire body, leg amputated led to sepsis, advised debridement again once condition stabilised but at 4.46 am on Tuesday after suffered a cardio-respiratory arrest ultimately died at the advanced trauma centre of the PGI. After hue and cry Dr. Mandeep Singh Dhillon, head of the department of orthopedics came to the rescue of his staff saying that there is heavy load of patients of bad fractures and crush injuries are to be attended by the PGI. He further said that our staffs are working in a war-like situation and there is huge pressure of patients and thus 40% staffs is posted to cope with emergency and thus delays are unavoidable. The reasons for delay in surgery stated to be that during administration of anesthesia Anupama became haemodynamically unstable condition as stated by spokesperson of PGI Manju Wadwalkar and she could not get ICU bed due to non-availability so she was kept under observation. The version of the doctors and the parents entirely difference but it is clear that such a big hospital could not save Anupama. I am of the opinion that whatever has happened is certainly unfortunate but at least P.G.I. cannot be blamed. I have been to P.G.I. number of times as an attendant t the patient and seen the working of the doctors minutely. The doctors are still soft spoken and hardworking and they take care of the patients depending upon their nature of emergencies and not according to the importance of the patients. The root cause of such episodes is the heavy rush of the patients to the hospital. I do not agree with the version of some persons who are of the view that the V.I.P. patients are being given much importance. The number of such could be marginal and that is inevitable in the present scenario. Only referred cases that too of serious nature should be admitted by the P.G.I. to reduce rush of patients. No doubt Anupama’s case was of serious nature. At AIIMS New Delhi they do not admit a patient which is of not much serious in nature but referred such cases to other local hospitals even if the bed are available then why not PGI follow those instructions and send such cases to GMCH and General Hospital Sector-16, so that serious case like Anupama the only child could not be ignored due to rush of patients. Daily 5000 come to PGI in the O.P.D and they cannot be treated mechanically but doctor needs a time to attend to the patients that is why the PGI authorities are thinking seriously to attend 6 patients in one hour and also thinking of pacing a board “No Vacancy” for the patients who do not have serious ailment. Though the inquiry has been marked by the PGI Director Dr.YK Chawla under the chairmanship of Dr.Rajinder Singh, head of General Surgery Department and the other members are Dr. MS Dhillon, head of the orthopedics department, Dr.NK Tewari of neurosurgery and Dr.RK Sharma of the hospital administration to submit report within 48 hours. But all these members are of the same institution and one cannot expect much as this is just internal inquiry and family members have not been included. Number of organisation including Civil society group “Aawaaz” are up in arm and organised protest against the PGI doctors who handled the case of Anupama’s case. Human life should be given proper attention. PGI has already planned to include de-congestion of emergency, setting up of various centres of excellence, state-of-art operation theatres and exploring the pathogenesis of various diseases at molecular level. The P.G.I. has already added the facility of Liver Transplantation and bone marrow transplantation, kidney transplantation and further planning to add the facility of Multi-Organ Transplantation i.e. lungs, heart, pancreas and intestine and above all treatment of various diseases through various ongoing stem cell projects. At present PGI is fully equipped with the state-of-the-art facilities like Cellonics Laboratory, Interventional Pulmnology Services, 25 dialysis stations of Haemodialysis unit, Advanced Trauma Centre and Advanced Facility for Small Animal Research. A part from this Grade-I Viral Diagnostic Laboratory, Nucleic Acid Testing Laboratory for screening transfusion, Transmitted Viral Infections, High Energy Linear Accelerator for testing of cancer etc. etc. All these facilities could be possible only if we try to reduce patients rush to enable PGI to fulfil the task allotted to it and to provide high quality patient care to the poor patients of northern region living in difficult hilly states. In India at present having 335 medical colleges and added 46 medical colleges in the last two year and thus MBBS seats has shoot up to 41,569 by adding 8677 seats and number of PG seats had increased from 13000 to 22194 by adding another 9000 seats. All these facilities are possible if rush of non serious patient is reduced otherwise proper care of patient is not feasible and serious patients like Anupama will keep on dying and no concrete steps will be taken rather than a blame-game and the things will be over till the next victim suffers.