THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The government medical colleges in the state are functioning with doctors and staff strength sanctioned in 1965.
Barring interim creation of posts, there has been no significant change in the staff pattern for more than five decades even as hospitals attached to the medical colleges are bursting at the seams.
The demands raised by Kerala Government Medical College Teachers Association (KGMCTA) and various other doctors organisations for sanctioning more posts at the level of assistant and associate professors are yet to be fulfilled by the government. Not to say that the shortage of doctors has adversely hit the patient care activities including , OP, inpatient services, super specialty wings besides specialty programmes like organ transplantation.
The doctors lament that the government is focusing more on increasing the retirement age rather than making changes in the sanctioned strength commensurate with the patient load in medical college hospitals. The gap between the sanctioned and existing strength of doctors is as high as 100 in many medical colleges.
Another problem plaguing the medical colleges is the delay in filling up the vacant posts including those arising out of retirement.
The shortage of doctors is affecting patient care activities across the board especially the OP wings. While a minimum of 10 to 15 minutes are required to understand patient’s medical history, finalise laboratory investigations and decide line of treatment, doctors at the medical college OPs are able to barely spend five to six minutes because of the heavy rush. Experts say in Western countries , doctors spend 20 to 30 minutes on each patient.
Not only out patient wings, even super specialty departments; urology, neurology, cardiology, gastroenterology, nephr-ology, neurosurgery are working under heavy pressure. It is in this backdrop that the medical college doctors associations have reiterated the demand for revision of sanctioned strength based on scientific appraisal of patient load.
