The Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) of the Indira Gandhi Government Medical College and Hospital (IGGMCH), Nagpur, has written to the dean of IGGMCH threatening to go on a strike if public health department doctors are not appointed for COVID-19 duties at the hospital. The resident doctors have cited academic loss and also made some other demands.

A letter written by the association to the dean read:

This training is not irreversibly hampered due to the repeated shift in COVID wards. We have a training period of 3 years to become a competent specialist doctor. More than third of that time has been spent working in COVID wards. If this continues, we are afraid we won’t have the necessary skills and competency needed by the end of our training period. We are supposed to be here to be trained in our respective fields but we are being shunted to fill the gaps in our public health system. All resident doctors irrespective of their specialties have been working in COVID wards instead of their own departments.

Resident doctors are being used as stopgap solution and have been shouldering the burden the COVID doing every minute thing related to patient care. Work that should be done by doctors under the employ of public health department, is being done by students. This is a tremendous waste of human resources and is a ticking timebomb as this decision will lead to a generation of inadequately trained specialist? doctors and will leave our health care system in even worse shape than at present.

A year into the pandemic, we hope our government is better equipped to handle the challenges that are being faced. Instead of turning medical colleges and hospitals which are tertiary care centers into dedicated COVID hospitals, they should be used for patients that actually need specialist care. Trainee specialist doctors are beign forced to work in general practioner roles which is detrimental to all parties involved; that is the trainee doctors, the patients and the limited health care facilities that we have.

Doctors employed by the public health department could take over the day-to-day patient care, while resident doctors can be posted in supervisory roles. The administration has comfortably and conveniently ignored the well being of resident doctors as is evident from the fact that initially only the resident doctors were recruited for COVID services. Only when the patient load increased, were the MOs appointed, and as soon as the situation was under control the MOs were relieved of the COVID duty instead of relieving the residents so that they could continue with their academics.

On top of being forced to work in general practitioner roles, trainee specialist doctors have had to face bureaucratic hurdles too. Too add insult to injury, trainee doctors who have been at the frontline against the pandemic have received no exemption with regards to the fees to be paid for the academic year, a year where their academics suffered at the cost of COVID duties. No exemption has been provided for thesis submission either which is grossly unfair. Our tertiary care center was converted to dedicated COVID care center which further reduced the flow of patients that would usually seek health care there. The patient, who ends up here for treatment also suffer due to this, as most of the resources are diverted to COVID wards leaving general wards without bare necessities and medications.

Things done:

If our requests are not considered and if the same scenario repeats wherein residents have to face the whole brunt of the situation then we would be left with no choice but to withdraw our services in non COVID and go on an indefinite strike. If no further actions are taken even then, we would withdraw our services from COVID duties also.