PESHAWAR, June 29: Junior doctors are charging hefty consultation fees in clinics of consultants who have gone abroad for summer holidays, patients and health workers complained.
"Junior doctors are examining the patients at the clinics of the consultants and charging Rs300 as consultation fees despite not being qualified to receive the same," said a dispenser at the Dabgari Gardens, the hub of private clinics in the city.
He said that several consultants proceed abroad during June- July period to pass their summer vacations there. In their bid to keep their clinics operational, they hire junior doctors, who examine patients instead of senior consultants.
"These junior doctors issue prescriptions on letterheads of consultants and in return receive a paltry sum from the consultants. This is not new and has been going on for a long period of time," said a senior doctor.
A junior medical officer at one of the wards of the city hospitals is seeing the patients in the well-established clinic of a surgeon who had gone abroad on May 30, a source said.
He said that the medical officer worked in the surgeon's ward and did not receive any money from the surgeon in return, adding that he was doing it simply because he (the junior doctor) wanted to keep the surgeon happy.
A health worker, said that most of the patients thought that all doctors sitting in the Dabgari Gardens clinics were specialists and were used to paying Rs300 as consultation fees.
"This way, gullible patients are fleeced by non- specialists," he said. Most of the critically-ill patients were brought to the city after being referred by junior doctors from their respective areas.
"A doctor other than the one I had consulted a couple of months ago examined me. I know because I had met him when I consulted him two months ago," said a patient from Mardan, who had come to consult a dermatologist for a skin problem.
"When I insisted that he was not the same doctor I had consulted earlier, the doctor's peon told me that he (the doctor) had recently returned from the UK and was a specialist.
I couldn't do anything other than going to another specialist where I had to pay another Rs300 in consultation fee", the patient said. Some of the doctors are honest, given the fact that they close down their clinics when they go abroad. But a majority of them do not want to give up their clinics and hire junior doctors' services.
Many cardiologists, physicians, gynaecologists, psychiatrists, orthopedicians, ophthalmologists and ENT doctors are earning as much money while being abroad as when they are attending their clinics.
Some of the surgeons also charge hefty fees from patients for private operations but the operations are actually done by the junior doctors. "An ENT specialist received Rs5,000 from me, but the operation was carried out by a junior registrar.
I came to know about it as the specialist who took money from me was sitting in his clinic when the operation of my brother was in progress on the last floor", said a health technician.
