Civil Hospital without medicine specialist, patients hit

The lone medicine specialist posted at the Civil Hospital here has been promoted as District Health and Family Welfare Officer, which has left all three posts of Medicine Specialist vacant, which, in turn, will give a difficult time to patients.

Recently, the only medicine specialist posted at the Civil Hospital, Amanpreet Kaur, was promoted, following which the post fell vacant.

Dr Amanpreet Kaur was serving as the Medical Specialist at the Civil Hospital for the past eight years. She had earlier served at the Community Health Centre, Koom Kalan, and Manupur and Medical College, Faridkot.

For a 200-bed Civil Hospital, which caters to the entire district, there are only three posts of medicine specialist and now, all of them are lying vacant. The hospital has a daily OPD of around 2,000 patients, of which 50-60 per cent take consultation from the medicine department. Dr Amanpreet was daily seeing OPD of around 300 patients and was serving here for the past eight years. Besides seeing patients in the OPD, she was also responsible for morning and evening rounds for patients admitted to the hospital.

There are two medicine specialists who come to the Civil Hospital on deputation. Medicine specialists from Khanna and Macchiwara come to provide their services three days in a week.

Gayatri, a patient, was taken aback when she was asked to meet another doctor instead of Dr Amanpreet. “I have been consulting the specialist here for the past one year and now, staff said she has been transferred from here. I am asking them to tell me the hospital where she has been transferred but they are not paying heed,” she rued.

Another patient said the rush at the hospital was more than usual when he visited the hospital recently. The doctor

whom I used to consult was not available. I will come again another day,” he said.

Senior Medical Officer Harpreet Singh said two medicine specialists were already coming to the

hospital, and more arrangement would be made so that no patient returns without consulting the doctor.