Ortho Department being manned by single doctor

UNIQUE ARE the ways of functioning of the Swaroop Rani Nehru (SRN) Hospital. For attending to around 150 patients in the Out Patient Department (OPD), performing half-a-dozen operations and also looking after the emergency cases, hospital's Orthopaedic Department has presently just one doctor on duty!

With two out of three senior doctors having gone on long leave, the responsibility of the whole department has been placed on the shoulders of the single doctor.

It is worth mentioning that the maximum number of patients visiting the SRN Hospital go to the Orthopaedic Department and with only one doctor to attend, the services of the department are certainly going to be affected. According to hospital records, 80 patients out of a total of 250 patients admitted to the hospital are of Orthopaedic Department.

Two senior doctors Dr UB Yadav and Dr AL Verma  are on two months' long leave since June 15, leaving the department under the responsibility of a single doctor, Dr DC Srivastava.

As a result Dr Srivastava has been overburdened by multiple duties including attending the patients in the OPD, conducting PG and UG classes in Medical College and attending to the emergency cases of orthopaedic treatment and operations.

When asked Dr Srivastava said; " I have to attend to around 150 patients daily besides a minimum of two emergency operations daily. The cases of accident or emergency are also assigned to me continuously". Several major operations have been successfully performed in the department under the prevailing situation including spinal surgery, bone tumour, nerve transplant surgery and other critical surgery, which have been performed at very few places in the state. " I have performed around 120 major operations in the last two months", said Dr Srivastava.

The scarcity of senior doctors has added to the misery of the patients who wait for hours in a queue. for their turn in OPD. The patients have no option but to go back from the department if the only doctor available has to perform any emergency operation. The patient coming from remote and rural areas suffer the most due to unavailability of sufficient doctors in the hospital.

However, principal of Moti Lal Nehru Medical College, Dr PC Saxena claimed that the department was functioning smoothly and  said "The doctors have been sanctioned leave according to rule which allows 50 percent doctors to go on leave during the vacations. Dr Srivastava is competent and capable enough to carry out the services of the department".