Jubilee Post News & Views
By Priyanka Saigal
Lucknow: Ever since a video of a Sub Divisional Magastrate (SDM) and a government doctor in Rajasthan went viral across the country as the SDM calls on-duty doctor ‘mentally unstable’ for refusing to vacate chair for her, a debate has started among the medical fraternity – ‘Who will inspect who’ (who can inspect) a health establishment.
The health department of Uttar Pradesh wants no more surprise inspection or attendance checking of doctors by senior health officials or the administrative officials barring district magistrates and divisional commissioners. Since the SDMs and tehsildars nowhere goes inside the chambers of a doctor and ask for attendance register and dust on the tables.
A debate was started as seen in the video that the lady SDM enters accompanying with cops surrounding the doctor inside his chamber where he can be seen sitting on his chair. Can anyone just simply gatecrash the chambers without any permission and disturb a workplace like patient care centers? The question has been doing the rounds.
In the video Dr N Bishnoi was seen calm throughout the argument as he answers to the questions asked by the SDM Priyanka Talania. The doctor gave an explanation that he can not vacate his seat as he is seeing patients and offered the officer the seat in front. The SDM was seen calling the doctor ‘mentally unstable’ and asked the doctor if he was “new to the service.”
The director general of medical health Uttar Pradesh on January 16 wrote a letter to the principle secretary health proposing that inspection of doctors or health establishments services should be done by senior health officials who are already appointed. The letter further says that it has come to notice that inspections at district hospitals/community health centres, primary health centres are being carried out by additional district magistrates (ADM),chief development officer,SDMs, tehsildar and lekhpal were seen behaving in an uncalled manner during the inspections.
This letter comes six days after principal secretary issued a circular stating that inspections will be carried out by DMs, commissioners and senior health officials as many doctors are absent from duty during working hours and some are even not staying in the campus or districts were they are posted. The circular demanded all doctors to remain on duty and their seniors to ensure this process.
The matter of attendance by administrative officials was raised by the Provincial Medical Services Association (PMSA) during a meeting held in September 2019. In the state the health department has directors, additional directors, chief medical officers, and additional chief medical officers posted at various levels and they do carry out inspections, evaluation at health establishments.
Another point in the letter from the DG health stated, “Inspection by a junior (pay) grade officer at the hospital took place of a senior doctor while he was doing his job by giving health services. Doctors at block level are of level 3 and their pay grade is Rs 7600 hence their work should not be inspected by a of junior grade officials. The health minister in a meeting on November 20, 2019 had instructed to issue directives in this regard.”
The letter further said that apart from the district magistrates and divisional commissioners, officials of the health department should be inspecting the health services and not junior officials who recently seen checking what a doctor is doing or how is doctor attending his patients.
The confrontation between doctors and bureaucrats is not new but now the issue is left hanging and it should be decided as to who is the incharge of the doctors. Recently, salary of medical staffers of one of the health establishment was stopped by the Barabanki district administration due to an adverse report. Later the salaries were released as it came to fore that the inspection team had no one from medical fraternity hence they can not actually do a complete inspection after which orders to stop pay was issued.
Hence some questions are being raised for doctors among medical practitioners.
“Do doctors have to stand up even while seeing a patient when an administrative official comes to them? Can a non-medical person or official actually take out an evaluation of clinical services? If the administrative official can not evaluate clinical work, what is the objective of such an inspection?”
