Now another group of medicos has joined the protest against routine duties being forced on them.
On Wednesday, around 250 postgraduate medical students of Government Stanley Medical College demonstrated in front of the dean’s office for nearly two hours to register their protest against staff nurses.
The PGs objected to being made to administer injections to patients as staff nurses, over the past two weeks, have stopped giving injections to patients.
The past couple of months, house surgeons of government medical colleges have been up in arms against routine work — including administering injections, drawing blood samples and taking them to the laboratories for testing and writing indents. They said it robbed them of the chance to learn patient treatment.
Following their protests, the health secretary issued directions to implement the internship guidelines of the Medical Council of India and the Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR Medical University.
The house surgeons were asked to do the routine work in the emergency wards and intensive care units alone.
“Over the past two weeks, however, staff nurses here have stopped administering injections as a fallout of the house surgeons’ protest. So, we have been doing it,” said a medico at Stanley.
The PGs had submitted representations to the dean earlier. “We will wait for 48 hours and if the problem is not resolved, we will no longer administer injections,” he said.
A senior professor of a government college said the protesting house surgeons and PGs should keep in mind the poor patients who come to the GHs for treatment.
“Treating patients should be a collective responsibility and cannot be compartmentalised,” he said.
K. Prakasam, president of Tamil Nadu Medical Council, said as per rules, intravenous injections should be administered by doctors and intramuscular injections by nurses.
“There are no jobs that junior doctors/PGs should do and should not do. They have to learn everything, starting from the basics including suturing during operations and stomach wash,” said K. Prakasam, president of Tamil Nadu Medical Council.
