Woes at PIMS: Patients decry lack of doctors

They want a monitoring mechanism to check whether the staff were observing their duties in the hospital or not

ISLAMABAD: Patients visiting the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) on Friday demanded that the authorities take notice of what they claimed were the frequent absence of senior doctors and non-observance of duty-roster by medical and non-medical staff at the hospital.

They were of the view that there should be a monitoring mechanism to check whether the staff were observing their duties in the hospital or not.

Moreover, they demanded that a system of reward and punishment should be initiated by the hospital management.

Amir Shah, a patient, alleged that senior doctors were often absent from their duties while only junior doctors who were studying ran affairs of the hospital.

Taimoor Khan, another patient, said that due to the non-professional attitude of staff at the emergency wards who shirked their Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), patients had to face several hardships.

When contacted, an official of the hospital said, unlike international medical practice standards where five to seven patients a day were tended to by a doctor, each doctor at Pims was examining dozens of patients in the emergency wards.

He added that there was a heavy load of patients in the outpatient department during the daytime when several patients with minor issues rush into the emergency wards for consultation.

The official refuted claims of doctors absent from their posts, claiming that doctors remain in the emergency ward around-the-clock to provide proper medical care.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 29^th, 2017.