Telangana Govt Hospitals Grapple with Staff Crunch

 Hyderabad: Government medical colleges are reeling under a severe manpower crunch, with hospitals operating without interns for several days. With the 2019 MBBS batch having completed its internships and the 2020 batch still awaiting results, despite exams concluding in early February, hospitals are facing an acute shortage of frontline medical staff.

The delay in announcing the results is also stressing students who are preparing for NEET PG and other postgraduate exams. With internships yet to begin, they are concerned about the delay in the academic process.

"The interns' joining in 2017 was delayed till July. For the past two years, it started on April 1 itself. This year, it's mid-April and results have not been announced for second and final year MBBS batches. Third year results have been released already," said a final-year student from the Kakatiya Medical College.

"Of 34 medical colleges in the state, only seven have interns to handle the patient inflow,” the student said.. “The rest being new colleges, their first batches yet to complete the MBBS programme. The final year students of these seven colleges also have not been able to start their internships due to delay in the announcement of results."

With the MBBS final year results on hold due to a delay in paper checking, the new batch of interns is yet to join, creating shortage of staff in associated hospitals. Over 120 interns in each college have not been able to join, causing work overload for residents, who end up working more than 70 hours per week.

"Junior doctors and interns form the 70 per cent of the workforce in government hospitals and are the ground level workers in a medical facility. Without them, the senior residents have to handle the huge patient inflow,” explained Dr Pranay Motte, senior resident at the Nizamabad Government Hospital.

He said there were around 80 residents in the hospital. “The patient inflow is around 800-1,000 during the summer and around 200 in-patients. With about 120 interns yet to join, the residents have to overwork. One can stretch for about a week but after that, everyone is exhausted."

Interns are vital for handling core clinical responsibilities, from performing life-saving procedures to assisting in surgeries and patient management. They handle a huge amount of workload daily in wards, emergency rooms, labour rooms, and ICUs. Their absence is now directly impacting the workload distribution and management of patients.

At RIMS Adilabad, the situation is similar, with only 65 residents in place to handle about 900 outpatients and 100 inpatients coming in daily. Around 120 interns are yet to join the hospital.

“There are no interns across Telangana,” said a resident doctor at Gandhi Medical College. “Casualty, ICU, and ward duties are being severely hampered. We are understaffed and overburdened. Exams for the new batch were over two months ago, but paper corrections are still pending.”

Gandhi Medical College is waiting for 250 interns to join. Osmania Medical College and Kakatiya Medical College expect around 300 and 250 interns respectively.

Senior resident Dr Karshini from Gandhi Medical College said, “Many senior residents from the para-clinical departments are being posted in casualty due to a lack of dedicated casualty medical officers (CMOs). This isn't sustainable.” Moreover, senior residents have not received their stipends for March till now.

While a small number of foreign medical graduates (FMGs), extension interns, and referred interns are helping, numbering 20-30 per college, it's not enough to manage the work in the hospitals.

Officials have hinted that results for final-year MBBS may be announced later this week or early next week