PESHAWAR, Nov 23: Surgeons are deceiving their patients as they receive huge surgery fees from people in their names but surgeries are carried out by junior doctors, health professionals said.
"A senior orthopaedic surgeon charges heavy fee from patients to perform their operations at a private hospital but he seldom carries out the surgeries himself. All the patients are operated upon by a medical officer," said a medical officer working at the same hospital.
He said that only a day ago, the surgeon received Rs25, 000 from a person but he did not even touch the patient. "People do not understand such tactics because they (the patients) see the surgeon standing before them when they are lying on the operation table. But as soon as they (patients) are administered anaesthesia, the surgeon slips away from the operation theatre to attend patients at his clinic downstairs."
Most of the surgeons are able to earn more money by resorting to this practice, said an operation theatre assistant. Another general surgeon, who runs a thriving clinic, is said to have hired the services of a junior registrar at one of the city's hospitals, who carries out surgeries for him, he said.
"My mother needed to undergo an operation for some eye problem for which I paid Rs15, 000 to a senior ophthalmologist, who shifted her to the operation theatre and started the procedure.
After five minutes, I found the same surgeon seeing the patients at his clinic," said a doctor. He said he got angry and confronted the doctor, who said that the operation was an easy one and that was why he had allowed a junior doctor to do it.
A technician at a major private medical centre said that surgeons were finding it hard to manage their time and that was why they had engaged junior doctors to help them in the evening.
A staff nurse at a hospital said that the practice of leaving patients in the hands of junior doctors caused post-operative complications. "People are not allowed inside operation theatres so they do not know that who carries out the operations," she said.
Sources also cited the example of a senior surgeon whose clinic was being run by a junior registrar for the past five years because of his being abroad. He (junior registrar) carried out operations using the name of the senior surgeon.
