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‘Impolite and discourteous’: Patients label PIMS doctors ‘rude’ - LRE - 08-23-2008 10:35 AM
‘Impolite and discourteous’: Patients label PIMS doctors ‘rude’
By Jamila Achakzai
ISLAMABAD: ‘Impolite and discourteous’ is how doctors and other officials are defined by patients and visitors at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS).
“They (doctors) are ill-mannered and rude. They treat us (patients) with insult when we go to them for appointment or checkups,” Noor Bibi, a patient, told Daily Times on Friday.
She said higher officials seldom visit the wards, giving a freehand to their subordinates to exploit patients. She said she could not get a bed for her ailing mother whom the doctors had suggested hospitalisation for.
“The staff give me a new date for hospitalisation every time I turn up to seek my mother’s admission. If I protest, they lose temper, shouting at me. They threatened me that my mother’s treatment would be denied if I raised voice. In either case, I’m the sufferer,” she said.
She said she had to put up with this inhuman treatment because she was too poor to afford costly treatment at private hospitals.
Saleem Mehmood, a government employee, said doctors and paramedical staff did not care for the patients, stopping their medicine supply and provision of beds.
He said, “If doctors listen to patients, over 70 percent of problems are gone. But if they keep their eyes shut, nothing is going to be changed.”
He said his child had not been given bed for two weeks for one reason or the other. “First they (staff) told me they are short of beds. Now they say my name is not on the list of the patients seeking admission,” he said.
He alleged doctors used to recommend patients to visit some private hospitals where they practice in the evening. He said the people were forced to go to private labs for medical tests because machines at the hospital often remained out of order.
“These are the circumstances that push people away from public hospitals,” he said. He said top officials of the hospital and the Health Ministry should visit the wards unannounced to get firsthand experience of what the patients had been through.
PIMS Spokesman Dr Wasim Khawaja denied the reports that doctors were rude with the patients. At times, he said, a doctor might be too tired to treat a patient properly but that did not mean that it was a routine.
He said the patients should lodge their complaints with the administration so that an action could be taken against the guilty. He said sometimes patients could not be given beds because of shortage of resources, which made their relatives angry. This practice, he said, was avoided as far as possible.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C08%5C23%5Cstory_23-8-2008_pg11_6