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| Think before you fiddle | | Private practice of Doctors | | Nirbhay Jammual
Jammu, May 27: Chief Minister,Omar Abdullah,has expressed his anger over the way doctors insist on private practice.He believes,as some of his predecessors had believed,that Doctors working in Government hospitals and medical colleges do not show as much interest in attending to the patients as they show it in their private clinics.Before Omar Abdullah dangles a stick on the doctors he should carry out survey on people visiting private clinics for tratment.If he carries out a survey he will find that 70 per cent of these politicians and bureaucrats visit the private clinics instead of the Government hospitals and medical collegs.Only those politicians and bur eaucrats visit the Government hospitals and medical colleges for treatment who are well known to the physicians and surgeons.Treatment from doctors in their private clinics is not as time consuming as it is in case of Government hospitals.
Private practice of doctors had been banned during the time Jagmohan was the Governor in Jammu and Kashmir in 1984-86.At that time several doctors submitted resignation letters because they were sure that private practice was more lucrative to them than their monthly salary.Later the Government felt that something wrong had been done and it sent messages to doctors,who had resigned,to resume their duties as ban on private practice had been lifted.Well,doctors have a skill and they would wish to practice in their private clinics before and after the duty hours in the Government hospitals.What is shocking is that doctors usually play truant in the hospitals and spend more time in their private clinics which means more money.Another shocking matter is that if patints needing some surgery visit the hospitals and medical colleges they are asked to wait for another one month or so on the plea there was no bed vacant in the wards.But if these patients visit the surgeon in his private clinic the surgeon himself takes interest in arraging a bed for him in the hospital.
Before taking any tough decision the Government should examine the pattern of practice in AIIMS and other private hospitals.Surgeons and physicians working in these private hospitals do not carry out practice in their private clinics.The reason being that each doctor gets a pay package of between Rs.one crore and Rs.1.50 crores per month.His job is to attract more patients to the hospital which alone can ensure payment of a crore of rupees.When we compare the salaries of the doctors working in private hospitals in Delhi,Punjab,Mumbai,Chenai and Kolkata with the salaries received by doctors in Jammu and Kashmir there is a big gap.Naturally the doctors working in Government hospitals and medical college have to supplement their meagre salary through private practice.You may be dishonest if you call doctors' profession as noble.All professions are noble.The Jammu and Kashmir Government is already faced with cash crunch and it is impossible for it to pay doctors as much salary as their counterparts draw in private hospitals in the metropolitan towns.If it is so it is better to avoid fiddling with a system that has remained alive during the last 100 years.Any tampering with this system may either disturb the medical setup or force doctors to migrate to others states and countries.
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