PESHAWAR, July 18: Patients visiting the evening OPD of city hospitals have been suffering a great deal owing to non-availability of specialist doctors.
"As most consultants have gone on vacation, the patients visiting the out-patient departments (OPDs) at the teaching hospitals have been facing hardship," a doctor at the Lady Reading Hospital said.
According to him, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal government had started evening OPDs in three hospitals - Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH), Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) and Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) - with a view to providing services of specialist doctors to patients.
The step, he said, had been taken by the government after senior doctors agreed that they would examine patients on a Rs5 OPD slip, provided the government ended the institution-based practice (IBP) launched by the military-led government.
Each and every ward in the three hospitals was required to assign duty of one specialist for the evening OPD, but the summer vocations of doctors has badly affected the scheme, said a health worker at the KTH.
He said that some OPDs such as gynae, orthopaedics, peads surgery, dermatology, etc., have no specialist in the evening shift because most specialist doctors in these wards are on a 45-day leave. Some OPDs are attended to by medical officers while others remain without doctors.
In other hospitals, the situation is no different, where a majority of specialists is enjoying holidays. Several departments there remain without specialists and the visiting patients are destined to contact other specialist doctors in their clinics.
"I brought my father to be seen by a skin specialist, but was surprised to see the OPD locked," said Ahmed Ali, a resident of Charsadda district. The administration has put up boards which proclaim that specialists would be there in the evening OPD from 3pm to 6pm, he said, adding, "but there is no doctor at 4pm."
He said that he had already spent Rs300 on a taxi and now he would have to take his father to a private clinic. A senior consultant told Dawn that they had arranged a proper weekly rota in which names of consultants for each day have been mentioned.
Some wards, he said, had four consultants, while others had only two. Therefore, it was difficult for them to do the evening OPDs on alternate days. He said the situation would improve by September when consultants would be back from their holidays.
He said that the timing of the OPD was from 3pm to 6pm, but consultants left the OPD at 5pm because they needed to reach their private clinics. A senior official at the KTH said that he had already taken notice of the absence of some doctors and told them to ensure their presence in the evening OPDs.
