The pathetic and heart-rending cries that resonate from the burns ward at the medical college hospital here is not something that any visitor to the hospital will ever forget.
Burns are an extremely painful condition and pain alleviation is an integral part of burns management and patient rehabilitation.
Yet the total lack of pain and palliative care for patients – not just burns patients, but those with cancer, and several painful conditions like pancreatitis, peripheral occlusive vascular disease, trauma patients with fracture ribs, spinal injuries and neurological diseases – continue to be a major lacunae in patient care in the oldest medical college in the State.
Over the years, attempts by a handful of doctors trained in pain management to start a full-fledged pain and palliative care unit at MCH has fallen flat because of the apathy of administrators. One such proposal has been hanging fire since 2014.
Poor awareness about the importance of pain management, inadequate facilities, and a total lack of skilled manpower to assess pain and give optimal care leaves hundreds of in-patients in extreme pain. “Pain management has never been a priority at the MCH. Doctors focus on curative care but providing quality of life has never been in the reckoning. In the burns ward, patients go through excruciating pain every time the sterile dressing is changed. Only oral morphine can give them pain relief but doctors are scared to prescribe it and very few are trained to administer it,” says a senior doctor.
Lack of priority
The lack of priority given to pain management is evident by the fact that this tertiary care hospital still does not have the Recognised Medical Institution Status (RMI) licence to stock or dispense oral morphine through its pharmacies.
In 2014, when the Parliament amended the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, removing the final legal barriers which prevented hospitals from accessing morphine for pain management, it was expected that more hospitals would focus on pain relief for such patients.
Burns patients at capital’s MCH in excruciating pain because of lack of pain management
