Bangladesh: Senior doctors skip evening duty at govt hospitals

Dhaka, July 7, 2014 (New Age): Senior doctors at government hospitals usually avoid attending indoor patients in the afternoon as they remain busy with their private practice. They often skip their evening rounds of the wards and cabins, said hospital authorities as well as Health Service officials. With the senior and specialist doctors skipping duty patients do not get proper treatment, said patients. Each senior doctor is duty bound to visit  patients in his or her ward or the cabins  twice a day, in the morning and evening. ‘We often hear that senior doctors leave hospitals between 1 PM and 2 PM, to skip their evening rounds,’ said a senior Health Service official. Specialist doctors are unwilling to attend their evening duty as they remain busy with their private practice, said Dhaka Medical College Hospital deputy director Mushfiqur Rahman. The written rules of hospitals require each consultant, senior consultant, professor, associate professor and assistant registrar  to pay round of their wards and cabins in the evenings, he said. Noakhali Medical College Hospital patient Shamima Akhter told New Age over phone Friday that no doctor visited her after 2 PM since she took admission with muscle pain four days back. On Thursday night, the on duty nurse told her no senior doctor would visit the ward before Saturday morning when she looked for a senior doctor after feeling excruciating pain, said Shamima. There are several instances of cured patients waiting for senior doctors to secure release, said attendants. The delay in discharging cured patients increases undue pressure on hospitals, said Mushfiqur. The DMCH authorities are planning to enforce the age old rule that requires senior doctors not to skip duties. DMCH interns often wait in vain for instructions from senior doctors to provide advice or treatment to indoor patients, said an intern. Terming the trend as unacceptable the Bangladesh Health Rights Movement chairman and former Bangladesh Medical Association president Rashid E Mahbub said the admitted patients at medical college hospitals were its worst sufferers. Senior doctors usually spend the evenings on private practice leaving their responsibilities to junior doctors, mostly interns, who are not authorized to prescribe, he said. Senior doctors said that they have been skipping evening duty since the government stopped the evening duty allowance. Every senior doctor has to stay at the hospital until 2 PM after which it becomes impossible for them to go home and return to duty, said a Shaheed Suhrawardy Hospital consultant.