By quirk of destiny if Jammu Medical College and Hospital is suffering from shortage of drugs and equipment, SMHS hospital in Srinagar is suffering from shortage of doctors. In either case it is the poor patients who have to bear the brunt. How long will authorities sleep over the matters that concern the public? This is a question which will be repeatedly asked in a democratic dispensation.
We learn there is huge rush usually in the emergency wards of the SMHS and hundreds of patients are coming to emergency daily. There should be adequate manpower meaning doctors and helpers to handle the affairs. In particular, the rush increases in the evenings and the evenings see as few as doctors onduty as is imaginable.The senior faculty of the SMHS should be present in Emergency unit and guide junior doctors but the former “hardly remain” there. Only two doctors are left to attend the patients in Emergency Ward and they cannot do justice to their job owing to a great rush of patients. The menace of doctors running private practice is the main reason why they remain away from duty to attend to private patients in their clinics.
The pay in Government Medical College (GMC) for junior doctor is just Rs. 19,000 as against Rs. 40,000 in Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) and Rs 60,000 to Rs 70,000 in Delhi. This huge disparity becomes the reason for doctors to do private practice at the cost of efficient service to be rendered in the Government department. We certainly advocate that the Government should consider revision of pay scale of doctors so as to bring it to close parity with the salary scale of neighbouring states so that they can reduce the urge for doing private practice. However given the human nature which speaks of lust for more wealth, this may not be the final solution of absentees from the hospital. Government shall have to enforce strict code of conduct as stated in the service rules and defaulters have to be given due in terms of the rules.
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