Chromepet govt hosp doctors juggle patients and postmortems
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Chennai: Doctors with only MBBS degrees at the Chromepet government hospital, the lone state facility in a 21-kilometre radius that has high accident-prone stretches, are struggling to switch between treating patients and performing postmortems. Barely five minutes from the hospital, aprivate medical college has a team of forensic specialists who see more mannequins than bodies.
Doctors at the hospital say the facility, on an average, does at least three postmortems a day, and around 1,200 a yearequivalent to those performed by tertiary care hospitals like the Stanley government medical college hospital and the Royapettah government hospital.
“While the other two have an exclusive forensic medicine team to do the postmortem, we have to take care of both, attending patients and postmortems,” said a doctor, who did not wish to be named.
The secondary care hospital receives accident cases from GST Road, Chennai bypass, Rajiv Gandhi Salai and also from the East Coast Road. In addition, they also get a lot of cases of injuries sustained at construction sites in the fast developing suburbs around.
Although postmortems on a routine day don’t get delayed, doctors say some of the bodies are referred to Royapettah or Madras Medical College on the days when there are accidents in multiple locations in the vicinity.
Director of Medical and Rural Health Services Dr M R Enbasekaran, however, said treatment at the hospital has not taken a backseat with doctors being engaged in postmortem or vice versa. “Specialists are available only in our tertiary care hospitals. In all our secondary care hospitals, MBBS doctors available at that hour do the postmortem. And treatment is not compromised at any point,” he said.
According to the government, autopsy is done in 257 district and taluk hospitals in addition to government medical college hospitals. Officials say autopsies take up to two hours and results are usually given within 48 hours.
“At Chromepet hospital, we try to give it within 24 hours,” said the hospital’s chief medical officer. “We avoid delaying work as our workload could increase suddenly if there are multiple accidents.”
Dekal V, head of the department of forensic medicine at Saveetha Medical College and hospital, said the state could ease the load on government doctors if they rope in private medical colleges to do postmortem. “At least in high accident-prone zones they could form a consortium with private hospitals, many of which have forensic specialists,” he said.
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Chennai: Doctors with only MBBS degrees at the Chromepet government hospital, the lone state facility in a 21-kilometre radius that has high accident-prone stretches, are struggling to switch between treating patients and performing postmortems. Barely five minutes from the hospital, aprivate medical college has a team of forensic specialists who see more mannequins than bodies.
Doctors at the hospital say the facility, on an average, does at least three postmortems a day, and around 1,200 a yearequivalent to those performed by tertiary care hospitals like the Stanley government medical college hospital and the Royapettah government hospital.
“While the other two have an exclusive forensic medicine team to do the postmortem, we have to take care of both, attending patients and postmortems,” said a doctor, who did not wish to be named.
The secondary care hospital receives accident cases from GST Road, Chennai bypass, Rajiv Gandhi Salai and also from the East Coast Road. In addition, they also get a lot of cases of injuries sustained at construction sites in the fast developing suburbs around.
Although postmortems on a routine day don’t get delayed, doctors say some of the bodies are referred to Royapettah or Madras Medical College on the days when there are accidents in multiple locations in the vicinity.
Director of Medical and Rural Health Services Dr M R Enbasekaran, however, said treatment at the hospital has not taken a backseat with doctors being engaged in postmortem or vice versa. “Specialists are available only in our tertiary care hospitals. In all our secondary care hospitals, MBBS doctors available at that hour do the postmortem. And treatment is not compromised at any point,” he said.
According to the government, autopsy is done in 257 district and taluk hospitals in addition to government medical college hospitals. Officials say autopsies take up to two hours and results are usually given within 48 hours.
“At Chromepet hospital, we try to give it within 24 hours,” said the hospital’s chief medical officer. “We avoid delaying work as our workload could increase suddenly if there are multiple accidents.”
Dekal V, head of the department of forensic medicine at Saveetha Medical College and hospital, said the state could ease the load on government doctors if they rope in private medical colleges to do postmortem. “At least in high accident-prone zones they could form a consortium with private hospitals, many of which have forensic specialists,” he said.
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