Daily Times

Citizens of the federal capital on Sunday demanded of the authorities concerned to immediately expand the emergency department with more staff to provide timely and proper medical care to the patients at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS).

According to them, the health authorities should increase services at the accident and emergency department of the hospital to manage the maximum number of patients as a large number of patients visit the PIMS emergency daily and face hardships due to the unavailability of adequate services.

They said that only limited beds were available at the wards situated in the emergency department, where not only the staff was limited, but there was an acute shortage of medicines as well besides testing equipment.

They asked to take notice of the frequent absence of senior doctors and non-observance of the duty-roster by the medical and the non-medical staff at the emergency unit. They said there should be a monitoring mechanism to check whether the duty staff observed their duties or not.

Mateen Khan, a patient, alleged that senior doctors mostly remained absent from their duties while only postgraduate (PG) doctors, who were studying there, ran the affairs of the most sensitive unit of the hospital.

He added that due to the limited knowledge and experience, the PGs could not satisfy the patients having serious medical complications. They even could not properly treat patients with minor medical issues and mostly referred the serious patients to other hospitals.

Zaheer Abbas, another patient, said due to the non-professional attitude of the staff in the emergency, the patients faced several hardships, particularly those who are in a very critical condition.

Sometimes patients at the emergency department, he said, needed immediate response from expert doctors, but only general physicians were found there and the specialist doctors could not reach the ward on time.

Another patient, Abbas Ali, demanded the deployment of sufficient staff, including medical and para-medical staff, at the emergency wards in order to deliver better services to the patients. He said, keeping in view the serious nature of the section, only well-trained medical and non-medical staff, who know the standard operating procedures (SOPs) and all other procedures, should be assigned to the PIMS emergency wards.

Imran Waseem, the brother of a patient, said the hospital needed the latest centralized cooling system as many serious patients needed specific room temperature for healing of injuries and even for operations in the operation theatres but no one was taking care of this important matter. When contacted, the hospital official said that postgraduate doctors who are fourth-year medical students having enough skills properly looked after the patients in the emergency wards while the registrar and other senior doctors also examined the patients.

He dispelled the impression of any shortage of medicine or staff at the hospital’s accident and emergency department and said that medicines were available in sufficient quality to meet the daily requirements.

He said that the hospital management had started training sessions with medical practitioners to improve their communication skills with patients and attendants. He said that a sufficient number of doctors performed duties at the hospital’s emergency wards.