RAWALPINDI, June 14: One of Islamabad’s leading public hospital’s paediatric ward refers patients to other hospitals in the twin cities, in violation of the referral protocol, sources said on Thursday.

They said the hospital was following one bed-one patient policy and referred the remaining patients to other hospitals irrespective of their condition.

The doctors at one of the hospitals, where these patients were referred to, said the usual procedure for referring was to first manage the patient and stabilize the condition and then refer to another hospital.

The doctors regretted that the procedure was seldom followed and the patients were simply directed to another hospital without guidance or management.

According to the doctors, a patient could only be referred to another hospital, if there were technical or medical facilities lacking and the patient could not be treated and was therefore sent to another hospital. But referring patients simply because of shortage of beds did not justify the referral.

They said this was a serious issue of medical ethics. There are standing instructions for all hospitals that whenever a patient lands at a healthcare centre, he/she cannot be discharged or allowed to go elsewhere until he/she has been managed.

They further said the procedure for referral was that the patient was transported in a hospital ambulance, accompanied by a doctor, who handed him/her over to the doctors at the referred hospital.

These protocols, the doctors said, were ignored while shifting the patient from this particular hospital and added that this was due to the wrong system of referral at that hospital. In almost all cases the patients were asked to take private transport to the referred hospital.

The doctors said during the whole process critical time was lost and in some cases the patient’s management became very difficult. “There have been instances of patients dying while being transported to the referred hospital,” a senior doctor said.

The doctors, at the hospital from where cases were referred, said their paediatric’s intensive care unit was closed and therefore they had to refer the patients to other hospitals.

They also accepted that most of the time they had more patients and not enough beds to accommodate them, therefore they were forced to transfer them to other hospitals. Although, on their part they tried their best to accommodate as many patients as possible.