Last week, nearly 70 senior doctors were transferred from the city's BJ Medical College to the Irwin Hospital, attached to Jamnagar Medical College.
The transfers took place with immediate effect. The reason: The state government wanted to fill up the teaching staff quota at the Irwin Hospital before the Medical Council of India dropped in for an inspection.
The absence of the senior specialists, however, is causing severe hardship to the patients at the Civil Hospital, who have been left at the mercy of Residents. Besides, studies at the BJ Medical College are suffering too.
The transfers also affect the doctors' families and the education of their children.
Sources at the Civil Hospital expressed no surprise at the move. In absence of adequate faculty in most government medical colleges, such mass transfers are almost becoming routine.
The question uppermost in their minds is - what if an inspection is now announced at this hospital as well.
"The transfers are so mindless¿ last time, a professor of anaesthesia was transferred out of here in the middle of her conducting an examination," said a doctor.
The doctors at the Civil Hospital feel the head of the department should be consulted before such transfers are ordered. The officials, they said, mostly shrug off concerns about the possible impact of such transfers. "No one has the guts to speak up and say no," said a doctor in the hospital.
Dr Bipin Patel, honorary general secretary of the Gujarat State Branch of Indian Medical Association, said instead of taking such ad hoc measures to meet MCI staff requirements, the government should come up with a strategy of filling vacant posts permanently. "It is not proper to resort to frequent transfers. This not only disturbs the families of the doctors but also the studies of medical students and treatment of patients", he said.
Dr M M Prabhakar, Medical Superintendent of Civil Hospital, said he did not know if the patients were suffering, "because these doctors are not on the establishment schedule". The doctors, he said, were transferred from BJ Medical College and so any impact on the Civil Hospital will not be known immediately.
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