PESHAWAR, March 9: The chief executive of Hayatabad Medical Complex has opposed the caretaker government’s move to appoint about 50 more teachers of clinical medical sciences at Khyber Girls Medical College.

“The government sanctioned 49 new posts for 10 clinical disciplines at Khyber Girls Medical College (KGMC) in May last year. They new appointees are likely to be accommodated in the Hayatabad Medical Complex, which has already been declared a teaching hospital for KGMC,” said official sources at the health secretariat.

They said that the HMC and Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) had already been providing teaching facilities to the KGMC students without any problem and there was no need for the new recruitments.

Quoting a letter sent to health secretary by HMC chief executive, the sources said that the adjustment of 49 more teachers at the 600-bed hospital would affect its performance. The letter said that the HMC, built over 351 kanals of land in 1996 with 17 major units, was finding it an uphill task to accommodate the existing staff and large number of patients.

“It will be unrealistic to expect that HMC would house 10 additional units, because each of the existing wards has purpose-built consultant offices, ministerial staff offices, doctors room, nursing room, dressing and procedure rooms etc,” the letter said.

Deviation from the building design will adversely affect the indoor environmental quality of clinical units, the letter added. Furthermore, the HMC isn’t able to provide offices to each of its existing 62 teachers and how can it be expected to provide the same to 50 new teachers and their staff.

The letter, according to the officials, said that the number of beds in one ward should be 40 in line with the criteria set forth by the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council and splitting of the wards would lead to depletion of beds.

The operation theatres of the hospital remain functional every working day with the existing wards and it won’t be possible to provide these facilities to additional surgical, eye, ENT, gynae and orthopedics wards.

Teaching staff of the HMC are the employees of the Khyber Medical University (KMU) and PGMI so the establishment of KGMC’s wards therein would create chaos in the administrative process.

The officials said that most of the teaching units of the LRH, HMC and Khyber Teaching Hospital were critically short of teachers, partly due to delay in promotion and partly due to the appointment of teachers on contractual basis. The new posts, likely to be filled by the existing teaching staff of the said hospitals, would further deplete these institutions, they feared.

The HMC has teaching staff for the clinical disciplines of dermatology and psychiatry, but it doesn’t offer admission facilities to the patients in the wake of non-availability of space.

Sources said that the appointment of new teachers would cost an additional amount of Rs65 million annually that would neither improve the patient care nor would do any good to the medical education.

The letter asked the government that the plan to appoint new teachers and accommodate 10 additional units at the HMC should be reviewed and withdrawn.

The government should declare City Hospital as teaching hospital for the KGMC, it said, adding that the HMC has already providing teaching facilities to the KGMC students and would continue to do so with its own teaching staff and resources.