KOZHIKODE: Postgraduate doctors and house surgeons at various government and private medical college hospitals have written letters to their respective hospital authorities and state health department expressing their concerns on spending most of their training time handling only Covid patients. This, they have pointed out, has limited their exposure to other clinical experience.
According to PG medicos, without the exposure to practical experience by attending to all kinds of patients with diverse clinical conditions, their growth and experience as medical professionals are being hampered. When the number of Covid patients started rising sharply, the various MCHs were declared Covid hospitals in April.
Now, these are tertiary care centres for handling category C (critically ill) Covid patients. Since April, PG students have been busy doing the data entry of Covid patients being admitted to the hospitals and preparing reports of their health conditions.
Neha Rajan (name changed), a postgraduate student at Kozhikode MCH, said before Covid, the hospital used to handle over 3,000 patients in the outpatient section and more than 100 different surgeries under various departments on a daily basis. “We have not learnt any special skills during the last eight months. Without any clinical experience, it will be difficult to treat patients in future,” she pointed out.
“With the Covid spread, hardly any surgeries are being performed and the OP wing has been closed for several weeks. My classmates and I have not met non-Covid patients for more than three months now. The present system focusing just on Covid cases is hindering the training and education of medicos. This will cause long-lasting damage to society and health services.”
Postgraduate students and house surgeons at the Ernakulam MCH also have been facing the same situation since it was declared a Covid hospital in March. “There are 72 house surgeons at the MCH and we all are getting affected due to the present Covid situation. Other than our MCH in Ernakulam, we are also posted in the Kottayam and Alappuzha MCHs.
Normally, we should have to complete a month of Covid duty and the remaining period in other departments. Now, we have completed more than five months of Covid duty at the MCH itself. Even the PG students are struggling, as their exposure to surgeries and other departments are getting affected,” said Siby Jose, a house surgeon at the Ernakulam MCH.
“We have only a 12-month house surgency period and almost seven months have gone now. It is sad that Covid has taken away our exposure to other fields of medicine and surgery. We fear that this will affect us in the future,” said Siby.
No interns next year?
The issue was also raised by senior doctors at various meetings. According to them, postgraduate training has been affected because of the priority given to Covid care in medical colleges. Besides, classes of MBBS students have come to a standstill and most of them have been confined to their homes for more than six months now.
Due to the present situation, the exams scheduled for June and July have been delayed. If this continues, there will be no interns working in the MCHs for several months next year, they said.(With inputs from Anuja Susan Varghese in Kochi and Shainu Mohan in T’Puram)
‘pandemic will revive medical edu system’
Deputy Superintendent of Thiruvananthapuram MCH Santhosh Kumar S S said the pandemic would revive the medical education system in Kerala.
“The students should take this situation in a positive manner as it’s giving them a unique opportunity. The students are getting more exposure and students specialising in various streams have got the opportunity to work in ICUs, casualties etc. Ever since the lifting of lockdown restrictions, non-Covid patients are coming for treatment at the MCH. Covid-19 patients also have various other ailments. Hence, the exposure is still there,” said Santhosh Kumar. He agreed that the UG classes have been affected.
“Online classes are going on but the students are not getting clinical and lab exposures. We hope things will get back to normal in the coming days,” he added.