NEW DELHI: With 90 per cent of beds lying unoccupied at Jai Prakash Narayan Apex Trauma Centre (JPNATC) of AIIMS, which are allocated for the Covid19 admission purpose, many trauma patients are denied emergency care and turned away without getting treatment. Voicing concern over this development, the resident doctors’ association (RDA) of the AIIMS have written to the director of the institute to engage more beds for trauma patient care.
According to an RDA member, the waiting period for admission of a severe trauma patient has significantly increased, leading to adverse outcome. Increase in the number of regretted patients is leading to adverse outcome in them due to delay in care.
“As per available records, the trauma centre emergency department is rendering its services to about 70-80 per cent of patients during the pre-Covid period. During the initial lockdown, the footfall was far less and hence did not pose a major burden on the smooth running of trauma facilities at Main AlIMS. Limited resources and an increasing number of trauma cases have adversely affected the patient outcome and training of the residents,” read the letter addressed to the Director on August 13.
“It can be understood that during the Covid waves the beds were converted for corona patients, but now that very few patients are coming, we don’t see any point in keeping them occupied. Limited OT tables for trauma patients are causing an increase in waiting time for both emergency and routine operations,” said one of the members of the RDA.
The RDA claim that only 20-30 patients have been in the JPNATC Covid facility for the last 1.5 months, which is 10 per cent of the occupancy, but the whole building (7 storeys) is blocked. Trauma patients are dying due to a shortage of resources.