Even if priority treatment is considered necessary for hospital staff/employees, it should be done in proper fashion.
RAWALPINDI: A few days back my father happened to visit the PIMS children’s hospital in Islamabad along with my ailing sister to seek medical treatment for her as an outpatient. They took a registration number/patient slip from the reception desk and then went to the relevant medical officer’s room.
An assistant sitting outside the doctor’s room put a serial number on the patient slip and directed them to wait for their turn. They sat there on a wooden bench placed outside the doctor’s room in the main waiting area, where already almost eight to 10 people with their children were waiting for their turn. My sister had fever and my father was worried for her and wanted her to be seen without delay. As they waited, they noticed that several people would come, whisper something into the ear of the doctor’s assistant, and go in — and it was clear that they had no slip with them, which meant that they were jumping the queue.
After this happened three or four times, my father got up to find out what exactly the assistant was doing and why he was letting these people through, as others waited patiently. The assistant told him that the people who were being let through without going through the waiting line were all hospital staff and that she (the assistant) was under instructions from her seniors to allow this. Despite what the assistant had said, there was no way really to check if all those using this out-of-turn process were, in fact, hospital staff or their relatives and/or friends.
My father and ill sister had to wait over two hours before their turn came to see the doctor. After seeing him, my father decided to go to the PIMS’s administration office to register a complaint against the manner in which genuine paying patients were being treated. His suggestion to the hospital was that even if priority treatment is considered necessary for hospital staff/employees, it should be done in a proper fashion. One way of doing that would be for all such eligible personnel to be issued medical cards and only upon showing such cards should they be given out-of-turn treatment. Furthermore, this facility should be only for hospital staff and not their relatives and/or friends.
One hopes that the management of PIMS children’s hospital in Islamabad will address this matter.
Zainab Waheed
Published in The Express Tribune, November 25th, 2012.
