PESHAWAR, March 1: Patients who consult professors and assistant professors at their private clinics often get preferential treatment at the government hospitals where the consultants work. This often adversely affects the poor patients who are admitted through the hospitals’ outpatient departments, according to some junior doctors and paramedical staff.

“I recently admitted a seriously sick patient to my ward, but he was discharged the very next day by our professor,” said a medical officer who works for the Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH).

According to him, he had admitted the patient from the KTH’s outpatients department (OPD). On the other hand, the professor wanted one of his own patients admitted, who he had seen in his clinic, hence the quick discharge of the poor patient.

He said the patient in question was supposed to undergo some laboratory tests, but he was discharged instead. “I was helpless before the professor. The patient obviously suffered as a result,” he added.

Health workers at the government hospitals say that many patients visit the consultants’ private clinics in an effort to get better treatment at the wards. They claim that several patients who need admission are denied the facility simply because they don’t visit the consultants’ clinics.

“Of the 40-odd beds in each of the wards, 35 are often occupied by the patients who have prescriptions from the consultants’ private clinics,” said a medical officer working for the Lady Reading Hospital. As a result of the objectionable practice, even some seriously sick people were allotted ‘beds’ fashioned out of wooden benches.

In the surgery wards, the situation was particularly bad because the patients admitted from the OPD had to wait for weeks, even months, to get operated upon, said a medical officer. He said the professors often wanted the junior doctors to operate on their patients on a priority basis.

Last year the health department had issued a notification, asking the consultants not to charge fee from seriously sick patients at their clinics and to refer them to government hospitals for admission. However, the directives have fallen on deaf ears.