PESHAWAR, June 9: Unnecessary investigations the patients are put through have been adversely affecting the performance of the public hospitals’ staff, doctors and technicians told Dawn on Thursday.

Every patient admitted to the state-run hospital is subjected to a battery of investigations, many of which are not necessary, said a doctor.

According to him, even the patients suffering from minor ailments are made to go through a painfully prolonged process of investigations. This not only embarrasses the patients but also affects the performance of technicians working at the government-run hospitals.

“The doctors at the hospitals advise urine, stool and blood examinations and chest X-ray and KUB (kidney ureter bladder) X-ray to each and every patient admitted to the hospital wards,” said a surgeon at a city hospital. He said these are called routine examinations which are not necessary for every patient.

As public sector hospitals lack paramedical as well as nursing staff, it is almost impossible for these hospitals to carry out all these investigations correctly because of heavy workload.

For instance, the three teaching hospitals — Lady Reading, Hayatabad Medical Complex and Khyber Teaching Hospital — have got thirty wards, with only three to five nurses working in one ward. About 20 to 30 patients are admitted to these wards on a daily basis and it becomes almost a herculean task for the nurses to take blood, collect urine from each patient and send the samples to the hospital laboratory.

“Several times, we have raised the issue of unnecessary investigations of the patients at the academic meeting of the hospitals but still the practice goes on unabated,” said a pathologist.

The problem is that all these patients are entertained free of charge which has also crippled the economic position of the hospitals, he added.

Not only this, the ward orderlies and midwives are also required to shift every patient for X-ray and ECG to the section concerned. It is an uphill task, given the fact that every hospital ward has got the services of only two ward orderlies and a midwife.

Many a time, the doctors complain that proper tests of the patients had not been carried out due to which they (the patients) suffer a great deal.

A senior consultant told Dawn that chest X-ray is needed by those patients who are to be operated upon because the anaesthetists at the operation theatre have got to examine the same before administering anaesthesia to the patients. Similarly, the physicians needed chest X-ray of the patients who complained of congested chest. According to him, only the patients suffering from some heart ailments or chest pain needed ECG.

A nurse at a city hospital informed that missing of X-ray, ECG and other investigations have become a common feature at the hospital because they were unable to handle the growing number of patients and their investigations.

She informed that the patients also wanted to be investigated thoroughly and therefore appreciated undergoing a large number of tests. There are also reports that the technicians at the official hospitals wrote the results of different tests without following the due course.