August 07, 2008	Thursday	Sha’aban 4, 1429

ISLAMABAD, Aug 6: Federal Health Secretary Khushnood Lashari on Wednesday ordered probe into poor patient care at the emergency ward of Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences.

Inspector General Hospitals Dr Qazi Abdul Saboor has been asked to conduct the investigation and submit a report within the shortest possible time. He has been told to fix the responsibility for the declining standards of patient care.

Separately, a deputy secretary of the ministry has also been assigned the job to look into the hospital’s affairs.

Mr Lashari said the decision had been taken to improve the most critical component of the hospital which unfortunately was now getting ignored.

The health secretary said the hospital was suffering from leadership crisis and these problems were just manifestation of that.

“The hospital’s management has been lacking in supervision and effective control.”

He took the action on the complaint of an asthma patient who claimed that he was not properly treated by the doctor on duty when he went to the hospital at 4am on Wednesday with an acute attack of asthma.

“The doctor prescribed the medication without bothering to even assessing the condition of the patient and made no post-treatment observation for checking the progress of the patient,” an attendant with the patient complained, adding the doctor, who refused to identify himself, said he would treat the country’s president in the same way if he turns up at that hour of the day.

A growing chorus of discontent suggests that the doctor-patient relationship at the hospital was on the rocks. It has been observed that the duty rooster at the emergency ward is not followed with many of the doctors deputed to work at the emergency ward remaining absent particularly during night hours.

Display duty rooster, a standard protocol in hospitals, is seldom done at Pims emergency ward.“The entire show is run by trainee doctors, while senior doctors can hardly be found on duty in the ward,” a source revealed.

There are supposed to be four casualty medical officers on duty in the emergency ward at a time – one each in CMO room, resuscitation room, filter clinic and indoor. But one can seldom find all these on duty together.

Separately, there are growing indications of medico-legal findings being misreported at the hospital’s emergency ward in return for ‘favours’.— Staff Reporter