Amritsar: Suggesting that the hospital should not accept any medical-legal work until proper security is provided, doctors under the banner of the Punjab Civil Medical Officers Association (PCMS) went on a strike for a couple of hours in wake of a recent incident, wherein, a medical officer sustained bullet injury during an open fire between two gangs inside the facility.
Expressing concerns over the security of doctors and medical officers employed at emergency wards, the doctors of the hospital went on a two-hour strike held from 10 am to 12-noon on March 16 demanding to ensure the safety of the doctors at all the healthcare facilities.
had earlier reported that a medical officer attached to Amritsar Civil Hospital sustained a serious bullet injury after he got caught up in the middle of an open firing between two groups. The accused allegedly followed two brothers who went to the hospital to get the report of a medical-legal case and started arguing with them. The argument soon escalated into physical violence and one of the groups started firing at the other group which accidentally injured the doctor along with another security guard.
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Commenting on the same, Dr Rohit Rampal, a member of PCMS told , " This kind of incidents of violence in healthcare facilities are becoming common day by day. How can we focus our duties with a constant sense of fear? We went on a two-hour-long strike on 16th March so that the authorities should take note of the importance of ensuring the safety of the doctors at all the healthcare facilities. However, we did not stop any emergency services. The incident at the Amritsar Civil hospital where the doctor got shot due to the brawl between two gangs is extremely unfortunate. "
A similar incident had taken place in the same facility on March 4, where several people had misbehaved with another doctor over issuing a medico-legal report.
After two cases of violence against doctors in the same facility within a month, the Punjab Civil Medical Officers Association's senior vice President doctor Ganga Dip Singh Shergill decided to hold a protest at all the hospitals and clinics in the state. He also suggested that the hospital should not accept any medical-legal work, especially at night across the state till authorities take a step to provide a proper security system to the health care facilities.
Following the rampant increase in the cases of violence against Emergency Medical Officers (EMO), many EMOs have stated that they have developed a sense of fear and are considering the environment of emergency words to be unsafe for their work.
Commenting on the incident at Amritsar EMO Sukhwinder Singh, posted at Samana Civil Hospital criticized the outrageous behavior of the offenders and told The Tribune, "There is no safety for EMOs at Civil Hospitals across the state." He further added, "There is no security guard at the emergency ward. Sometimes around 30 people accompany a patient and the situation becomes very scary. We don't feel safe at all. Quite often we have to call the police to handle the relatives of patients."
Meanwhile, Dr Nidhi Bansal, president, IMA, Patiala, stated, "We demand to secure environment to work freely at all the hospitals and strict punishment for the culprits."
According to experts' opinion, EMOs posted at the civil hospitals are more at risk as authorities have not yet taken any steps to deploy any Punjab police personnel. The EMOs responsible for making medico-legal reports and conducting postmortems are often targeted by the offenders. In fact, no security guard has been posted at the majority of civil Hospital all over the state.
Dr Jagpalinder Singh, SMO, Rajpura Civil Hospital told the daily, "We have deployed two private security guards for the night after incidents of violence a few years ago. I strongly believe a police post should be there at all the civil hospitals."