Biometric attendance at hospitals hits snags

Specialists seldom accessible for patients, attendants

LAHORE:

Amid a low doctor to patient ratio in hospitals across the country, efforts to ensure the presence of senior specialists on duty are again facing resistance.

The patients as well as their attendants appear helpless as hardly any hospital has specialists from across the medical fields available at all times. Especially, the professors are seldom accessible in the outpatient and emergency departments.

According to an official report, there are 1,979 hospitals in the country, including 1,279 run by the government and 700 private. The hospitals have 132,227 beds and 281,072 doctors registered with the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council. The figures show that one bed is available for 1,608 people and a physician for 963 patients. One dentist is available per 9,413 people.

The doctors serving in the hospitals include 28,736 dentists and 252,336 MBBS. Among them, 144,441 are male and 136,631 female.

According to the World Health Organisation, there should be one doctor available for every 1,000 people.

In Punjab, there are 32 main hospitals with 20,000 doctors, 70,000 nurses, 100,000 paramedics and 150,000 lower employees.

However, none of the public hospitals meet the state-of-the-art model of having facilities for the treatment of all diseases under one roof at all times.

Only the Mayo and Jinnah hospitals in Lahore can claim to meet the standard.

While several other government hospitals offer good treatment services for specific diseases, they have deficiencies in other specialisations

As a result, patients developing complications are sent to other hospitals to save their lives.

The absence of senior doctors when they are needed immediately has been reported in several cases in recent months.

To address the problem, the government has taken steps to ensure biometric attendance in every government hospital under the supervision of the provincial health department.

However, doctors, professors, nurses, paramedics and other staff have joined hands in rejecting biometric attendance. The main purpose of the system was to assure the attendance of all doctors, nurses, paramedics and other staff, including professors, in their working hours set by the department and to check those arriving late. After rendering the system ineffective, the employees violate the duty this Ming’s and misinform the visitor about the absence of their seniors, often claiming that they are attending a meeting.

In the absence of senior doctors, their responsibilities in the hospital emergency, outpatient, intensive care and other wards are assigned to trainees who are supervised by their senior over telephone.

When contacted, Punjab Health Minister Dr Yasmeen Rashid said the government is taking the most important steps to ensure the best possible treatment for needy patients.

This includes the implementation of the Medical Teaching Institutions Act in particular, she claimed. The purpose of the act is to provide all treatment facilities along with timely availability of doctors. She alleged that elements sharking their responsibilities took the support of unions.

The minister said every hospital could become state of the art if the employees paid full attention to their duties.

A patient at a hospital alleged that the senior doctors only checked patients who came with recommendations from influential people or their acquaintances.

He said the poor patients for whom the hospitals have been set up are not even allowed near the rooms of the professors.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 19^th, 2021.