THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The functioning of busy outpatient services in peripheral hospitals has been hit by the unavailability of doctors who are assigned non-medical work, often by local bodies. The doctors in Family Health Centres complain that they are forced to get involved in “other duties”, such as review meetings and medical aid distributions of local bodies, during OP time. This in turn affects their attention on clinics, resulting in dissatisfaction among patients, they say.
Aid distribution to dialysis patients consumes most of their time, a doctor working at an FHC said. “The OP clinics often get affected due to the non-medical work. Naturally, the patients waiting in the OP raise complaints against us without knowing the reason,” the doctor said.
The doctor’s role is to distribute the funds to the hospital where the patient has undergone dialysis. Prior to that, the doctor has to check if the patient is eligible for free dialysis. Sometimes the hospital will be located outside the panchayat, the doctor added.
According to the health department, close to 10,000 patients visit the fever OP services across the state every day. As many as 2,36,990 consulted for fever so far, this month. Though the principal secretary of the health department has issued a directive to keep the doctors away from non-medical duties, the local self-government department has not taken a favourable position.
Kerala Government Medical Officers’ Association (KGMOA) has asked the members to stay away from the non-medical programmes. “Earlier, local bodies used to provide additional manpower during fever season. But this was curtailed through an order recently,” said KGMOA state president Dr T N Suresh.
He pointed out that a recent incident of an overworked doctor in a Public Health Centre at Velloor in Kottayam fainted due to fatigue was not an isolated incident.
KGMOA comes out in support of docs
Kerala Government Medical Officers’ Association (KGMOA) has asked its members to stay away from non-medical work. “Earlier, local bodies used to provide additional manpower during fever season, but discontinued it recently,” said the KGMOA state president.