Kolkata: A bustling hospital ward with close to 70 to 80 patients on any given day till three weeks ago that had doctors and nurses on duty round-the-clock, the respiratory medicine ward at R G Kar Medical College now wears a deserted look after the horrific rape and murder of the 31-year-old PGT doctor. The crime was committed during her call duty hours in the ward. While doctors are nurses — apart from the agitating junior doctors — are still there, patient count has nose dived.
On Thursday, the entire respiratory medicine ward had only five patients.
Situated on the third floor of the emergency building and in the vicinity of the seminar room where the body of the doctor was found on Aug 9, the respiratory department has around 80 beds including four HDU beds and five respiratory care units.
Sources in the hospital said even till Aug 9, the ward had around 90% patient occupancy. Once the junior doctors declared the cease-work for justice, leaving only the senior doctors for patient care, the patient count started dwindling. The department currently is admitting patients whose condition is serious.
“Some admitted patients also wanted to go home, especially after the mob vandalism in the wee hours of Aug 15. We started discharging those doing relatively well one by one. At present, only patients who need immediate medical care are being admitted,” said a hospital source.
The department is currently headless as its head professor Arunabha Dutta Chowdhury, who had taken charge only eight days before the incident, got transferred. Prior to the incident, it was run by around five faculty members along with two RMOs with a back-up of 28 PGT doctors and others like house staffers and interns.
During night shifts, a second-year PGT would head the patient care along with a team of two first-year PGTs, a house staff, an intern and the nursing team. A final-year resident doctor would have to rush to the unit in case of any patient turning serious. The 31-year-old PGT was heading her team on that fateful night.
Four junior doctors who were on duty with her are now having to report to the probe agencies on a regular basis for questioning. They had also undergone polygraph tests.
“Every now and then probe agencies are visiting the department and hence we are restricting admission only to serious patients,” said an administrator.
Sources said it was difficult to run patient care service full-fledged without the PGTs in all other departments also.
