Jammu, August 15, 2024 — The Resident Doctors’ Association (RDA) of Acharya Shri Chander College of Medical Sciences (ASCOMS) and Hospital, Jammu, has issued a press release expressing their deep concern and outrage over the recent tragic incident at R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata. On August 9, 2024, a second-year female postgraduate resident in chest medicine was brutally sexually assaulted and murdered in the hospital’s seminar hall, a crime that has shocked the entire medical community across India.
In response to this horrific event, medical professionals across the nation have initiated protests demanding justice and stronger security measures for healthcare workers. Joining this nationwide movement, the RDA at ASCOMS, along with interns, undergraduate students, and nursing staff, has declared their full support and participation in the protests.
In a press release, the RDA stated, “This crime should awaken the human inside us and should move our souls to join this movement. We implore everybody to join us.” They extended their deepest condolences to the victim’s family, friends, and fellow residents, emphasizing the need for immediate and unbiased investigation and action.
The RDA has put forth several demands, including:
Immediate justice for the victim through an unbiased CBI investigation and the swift identification of all culprits.
Exemplary punishment for the perpetrators of this heinous crime.
Nationwide implementation of a strict “Central Healthcare Protection Act” to safeguard medical professionals.
Assurance of security for all doctors across India, under stringent regulations governed by the National Medical Commission (NMC).
Impact on Hospital Services
In light of their participation in the protest, the RDA has announced that all Outpatient Department (OPD) services and elective surgeries at ASCOMS Hospital, Jammu, will be temporarily suspended starting August 16, 2024. The association has urged the public to refrain from visiting the hospital for non-urgent or minimal complaints during this period.
However, the RDA has assured that emergency services, including NICU, SICU, and MICU, will remain fully operational. Patients in critical condition or requiring urgent care will be attended to by the hospital’s emergency team.
The Resident Doctors’ Association expressed their regret for any inconvenience this strike may cause to the public and thanked the community for their understanding and cooperation during this difficult time.
Public and Institutional Response
The RDA’s press release was copied to the Director Principal and Medical Superintendent of ASCOMS Hospital, all Heads of Departments, the Resident Doctors’ Association at GMC Jammu, media houses across Jammu and Kashmir, and other affiliated medical centers.
The strike at ASCOMS is part of a broader movement within the medical fraternity, demanding safety, justice, and better working conditions for healthcare professionals nationwide. The public is urged to stay informed and support the ongoing struggle for a safer and more just healthcare system in India.
Hyderabad: In the wake of getting relief to teaching hospital doctors in Telangana, the Department of Health has issued guidelines for the transfer of professors, associate professors, and assistant professors under the Directorate of Medical Education (DME).
The guidelines will facilitate the transfer of doctors from one teaching hospital to another, based on their qualifications and experience. It will also provide opportunities for doctors to enhance their skills and knowledge and serve the people of Telangana better.
Expressing gratitude to chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao, Telangana health minister, Harish Rao, e “Making Arogya Telangana is a significant step towards achieving this goal. We are working hard to make it a reality.”
In a good news to doctors at Government teaching hospitals. Medical & health department released guidelines for General transfers of Assistant Professors, Associate Professors and Professors working under the administrative control of Director of Medical Education. pic.twitter.com/i7NSBDEkWj
The guidelines state that transfers shall be affected only to clear vacancies
Only the employees who have completed continuous two years of service in a station are eligible for transfer.
Employees have to give an application to DME requesting for transfer.
Thereafter counselling shall be held for effecting transfers.
Only vacancies of (17) newly established medical colleges shall be displayed for exercising options during counselling to the extent required for strengthening patient services/meeting NMC guidelines for LoP/ 1st renewal.
If applications seeking transfer are more than the vacancies available in the above (17) medical colleges, then the vacancies of government medical colleges Suryapet, Nalgonda, Mahbubnagar, Siddipet and RIMS Adilabad may also be displayed.
In no case, the vacancies of Osmania Medical College, Gandhi Medical College, Kakatiya Medical College, or Government Medical College Nizamabad shall be displayed during counselling.
When more than one employee opts for a particular place, priority shall be given in descending order of, a) Spouse cases. b) Employees with a disability of 70% or more as certified by a competent authority as per applicable rules, c) Employees having mentally retarded children to a place where medical facilities are available, d) Widows appointed under the compassionate appointment scheme.
e) Medical grounds for the following diseases (either self or dependent children and dependent parents), to places where facilities are available for treatment. The spouse or employees who applied for priority under medical grounds shall be given preference in the following descending order. Cancer, Neurosurgery iii. Kidney transplantation, Liver transplantation, Open heart surgery, Bone TB.
Once transfers are effected on personal or medical grounds, the Head of the Department will get the truthfulness of the grounds verified.
Transfers under the provisions of these orders shall be completed within one month from the date of issue of these orders.
This decision is expected to provide better career opportunities for teaching hospital doctors and improve the healthcare system in the state.
The guidelines will further help address the issue of doctors who have been awaiting transfers due to various reasons.
Overall, the issuance of these guidelines is a positive step towards improving the healthcare system in Telangana and providing better career opportunities for teaching hospital doctors.
SRINAGAR: Every year world Asthma Day is observed in the month of May and Asthma ‘Care For All’ is the theme that has been chosen byGINA (Global Initiative For Asthama) on the World Asthma Day- 2023.
Stating that around five to ten percent of population in Kashmir division is suffering from, doctors on Tuesday said Asthm is the third leading cause of deaths worldwide.
Principal GMC Srinagar Dr Masood Tanvir Bhat said that Asthma and COPD that are chronic lung diseases are the third leading cause of deaths worldwide followed by cardiovascular diseases and Cancer.
Around 4.5 lakhs of people die worldwide every year due to chronic lung diseases and Asthma is a common disease and is found in around 5-10 percent population including children, he said.
Asthma cases are more in women than men while around 8 percent people in the adult population have this deadly disease, he said.
“Asthma is a common long term disease and early stage diagnosis and treatment is very important as it is potentially a life threatening disease and if prevention is taken, it can be kept in control,” he said.
Head of Department at Chest Disease Hospital Srinagar Dr Naveed Nazir said that myths and social stigmas are associated with this disease and our efforts on this day remain to educate people and spread a message that this disease can be controlled.
“If it is diagnosed on time, followed by proper patient care the disease can be controlled and threats can be minimized, he said, adding, “It is among the leading cause of deaths worldwide but if such patients take proper precautions, they can lead life like common people.”
He further said that it is an astonishing fact that in India ten times more deaths are reported due to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary disease as compared to Western countries. “Around 5-10 percent people in Kashmir are suffering from Asthma,” the doctor said.
Another expert, Dr Bikram Singh said that deaths due to Asthma are on rise worldwide because people don’t take medicines and they don’t understand how medicines help in its treatment.
He said that people must take precautions and they shouldn’t hesitate in using inhalers as it is absolutely safe with long term benefits and its side effects are very little.
“In Kashmir, Asthma cases are more and people need to take medicines regularly,” he said.
Doctors said that the World Asthma Day that is celebrated every year on the first Tuesday of May month is to increase understanding of the disease’s pathophysiology, promote asthma education, and improve the quality of life for people living with asthma.
ChatGPT appears to have a better ‘bedside manner’ than some doctors – at least when their written advice is rated for quality and empathy, a study has shown.
The findings highlight the potential for AI assistants to play a role in medicine, according to the authors of the work, who suggest such agents could help draft doctors’ communications with patients. “The opportunities for improving healthcare with AI are massive,” said Dr John Ayers, of the University of California San Diego.
However, others noted that the findings do not mean ChatGPT is actually a better doctor and cautioned against delegating clinical responsibility given that the chatbot has a tendency to produce “facts” that are untrue.
The study, published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, used data from Reddit’s AskDocs forum, in which members can post medical questions that are answered by verified healthcare professionals. The team randomly sampled 195 exchanges from AskDocs where a verified doctor responded to a public question. The original questions were then posed to the AI language model, ChatGPT, which was asked to respond. A panel of three licensed healthcare professionals, who did not know whether the response came from a human physician or ChatGPT, rated the answers for quality and empathy.
Overall, the panel preferred ChatGPT’s responses to those given by a human 79% of the time. ChatGPT responses were also rated good or very good quality 79% of the time, compared with 22% of doctors’ responses, and 45% of the ChatGPT answers were rated empathic or very empathic compared with just 5% of doctors’ replies.
Dr Christopher Longhurst, of UC San Diego Health, said: “These results suggest that tools like ChatGPT can efficiently draft high-quality, personalised medical advice for review by clinicians, and we are beginning that process at UCSD Health.”
Prof James Davenport, of the University of Bath, who was not involved in the research, said: “The paper does not say that ChatGPT can replace doctors, but does, quite legitimately, call for further research into whether and how ChatGPT can assist physicians in response generation.”
Some noted that, given ChatGPT was specifically optimised to be likable, it was not surprising that it wrote text that came across as empathic. It also tended to give longer, chattier answers than human doctors, which could have played a role in its higher ratings.
Others cautioned against relying on language models for factual information due to their tendency to generate made-up “facts”.
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Prof Anthony Cohn, of the University of Leeds, said that using language models as a tool to draft responses was a “reasonable use case for early adoption”, but that even in a supporting role they should be used carefully. “Humans have been shown to overly trust machine responses, particularly when they are often right, and a human may not always be sufficiently vigilant to properly check a chatbot’s response,” he said. “This would need guarding against, perhaps using random synthetic wrong responses to test vigilance.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Young doctors just out of medical school working as resident physicians, fellows and interns at major US hospitals are organizing unions at an increasing rate, citing long-running problems highlighted by the Covid-19 pandemic and a need to rethink the struggles young doctors face in the profession.
The Committee of Interns and Residents, an affiliate of SEIU, added five unionized sites in 2022 compared with about one a year before the pandemic and the surge has continued in 2023 with multiple union election filings. It currently represents over 25,000 residents, fellows and interns across the US, comprising about 15% of all resident and fellow physicians.
Over 2,500 residents and fellows at Mass General Brigham in Boston are currently waiting to have a union election date set after filing this year.
As with other industries facing a renewed interest in unionization from their staff, the US’s rich and powerful hospitals have responded with well-funded anti-union campaigns and tactics to delay union elections and contract negotiations.
Hospital management has opposed the unionization effort, declining to voluntarily recognize the union, encouraging residents not to sign union authorization cards ahead of the election filing and writing local op-eds in opposition to unionization.
Since going public with their union plans, staff have been sent emails and been invited to meetings to try to dissuade residents from unionizing, “often counting on myths around what unionizing would mean”, said Dr Sascha Murillo, a third-year internal medicine resident at Massachusetts general hospital.
“They tried to dangle some carrots with the salary increases and benefit changes that we’re going to see next year, but the only way we’re going to quantify that for the long term is by having a union and an actual contract,” said Murillo.
The unionizing campaign took off after vulnerabilities in the healthcare system were exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, she said, with residents working on the frontlines and bearing the brunt of staffing shortages, an influx of Covid-19 patients, and patients who deferred medical care.
Mass General Brigham offices in Somerville, Massachusetts. Photograph: Boston Globe/Getty Images
Residents often work 80 hours or more a week while being paid barely enough to cover rent in expensive cities like Boston. They often cannot leave or change jobs before they complete the three-year residency program.
“We’re the ones who are often the first faces that patients see. We’re privy to the issues our patients face and want to be able to advocate for our patients,” added Murillo. “These hospital systems are incredibly powerful. We’re seeing a trend across healthcare of these huge mergers and consolidation of power and it’s even more important for all workers in the healthcare system to be able to have a seat at the table to really ensure that those at the top understand what we face day to day in delivering patient care and that we’re able to check that power.”
About 1,400 residents at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia filed for a union election being held in the beginning of May 2023. Penn Medicine has hired law firm Cozen O’Connor, which specializes in union avoidance, in response to the union organizing effort and has encouraged residents to be wary of the union’s promises.
“It still feels like we aren’t being heard. It feels like the institution is still sending a message that they know what’s best for us, that they want to stay in a position of power,” said Dr Chantal Tapé, a third-year resident in family medicine.
Tapé said there was also a need to change the perception of residency programs as an inherently exploitative stage that residents just need to struggle through.
“Our big push is to have a union so that we have a seat at the table, so that there’s a system for accountability where resident voices are heard and hopefully persists across the years so that the issues that are most important to a resident at Penn 10 years from now have the same sort of venue for being heard as the issues that we’re experiencing right now,” she added.
Over 450 residents, interns and fellows at George Washington University are voting in a union election on 25 and 26 April.
“There’s been a large uproar of residents unionizing because residents and fellows across the nation have felt exploited in their jobs, undervalued, underappreciated, overworked in really unsustainable working conditions,” said Dr Marysa Miller, a first-year internal medicine resident at George Washington. “My starting salary was right around $64,000, which when you divide that out into 80-hour work weeks, I make about $15 an hour, far below the living standard in the city, so more than half of my paycheck goes to rent.”
Ahead of their union election, the Dean of the GW School of Medicine, Dr Barbara Bass wrote an email to all residents where she argued in favor of a direct relationship, referring to the union as a third party and citing concerns about the impacts a union could have on professional and mentoring relationships between faculty and residents.
“I think that was really just a tactic to try to scare people. And it’s really just not true, and not something that any unionized campaign amongst residents and fellows has seen across the country,” added Miller. “We are really the ones that are on the frontlines,” said Miller. “But ironically, we’re the voice that’s not listened to and I think that’s kind of what’s been seen throughout all of these union campaigns that are popping up through America.”
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Some 1,200 residents and fellows at Montefiore hospital in New York City won their union election in February 2023, with 82% voting in favor of the union. Residents at Sutter Health California Pacific medical center and Lifelong Medical Care in California also won union elections in 2023.
Ahead of the union vote in New York City, an anti-union video claimed “a vote for this union is a vote against us, your educational leaders”. The video presentation included slides with a misspelled “no ragrets” neck tattoo to warn about the “permanent decision” of unionizing, followed by a slide of a brain where a doctor encourages residents to use the right part of their brain in deciding on their vote.
Residents at the University of Vermont medical center, USC Keck and Greater Lawrence family health center in Massachusetts won union elections in 2022, and 1,500 residents at the University of Washington joined the CIR-SEIU.
At Stanford Health Care in California 1,478 residents and fellows won their union election in May 2022.
Stanford criticized unions ahead of the vote, claiming they prefer a direct relationship with individual residents. The National Labor Relations Board recently ruled against Stanford for refusing to furnish information before bargaining with the union.
Dr Philip Sossenheimer, an internal medicine resident at Stanford, explained the union drive was driven by issues residents experienced during the pandemic and doctors wanting to use unionization as a vehicle to address ongoing issues throughout the healthcare system and how those impact residents and patients.
“Our generation collectively is starting to realize the sort of losses that have come from degradation of labor strength in this country and declining rate of union membership, and I think broadly, as a society, we’re starting to reflect on what that power imbalance means for the average citizen, particularly since as people in this country, we spend a substantial amount of our time at work.”
The Penn Medicine hospital on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Photograph: Charles Mostoller/Reuters
At Children’s national hospital in Washington DC, residents organized a demonstration across the street from the hospital during lunch breaks to demand better pay, improved staffing, and other demands central to the union in new contract negotiations. Though a contract was settled in December 2022, the hospital is currently taking legal action against the union over the demonstration, claiming the union violated a “no strike” clause. The hospital has not commented on the action due to the pending litigation.
“It feels like such a retaliation,” said Dr Lydia Lissanu, a first-year resident at Children’s national hospital. “At the very least if it feels like they want to intimidate us even if it doesn’t work, they want us to know they’re very upset with us.”
Lissanu added that residents have been increasingly organizing unions because of how they were the ones forced to pick up the slack for vulnerabilities exposed in the healthcare system during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We’re being asked to pick up the slack essentially from all of the other shortages in the hospital, all of the things that have happened in Covid, all of the pediatric respiratory viruses surging all at once. A lot was expected of us, a lot of slack that we had to pick up with very little recognition, very little reward. We’re asking to be treated fairly and be paid for our labor, we no longer feel that we should be grateful for having this job, they should be grateful for us and what we bring to the table.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday held that practitioners of alternative systems of medicine such as Ayurveda are not entitled to equal pay with allopathic doctors as they not are involved in performing emergency duties and complicated surgeries.
Setting aside a Gujarat High Court order, the top court said the emergency duty that allopathy doctors are capable of performing and the trauma care that they are able to provide cannot be performed by Ayurveda practitioners.
It noted that even post-mortem or autopsy is not carried out by Ayurveda practitioners.
The apex court was hearing a batch of appeals challenging a 2012 Gujarat High Court order which had held that Ayurveda practitioners are entitled to be treated at par with doctors with MBBS degrees.
While recognising the importance of Ayurveda practitioners and the need to promote alternative or indigenous systems of medicine, the top court said that it cannot be oblivious of the fact that both categories of doctors are certainly not performing equal work to be entitled to equal pay.
A bench of Justice V Ramasubramanian and Justice Pankaj Mithal said allopathy doctors are required to perform emergency duties and provide trauma care.
“By the very nature of the science that they practise and with the advancement of science and modern medical technology, the emergency duty that allopathy doctors are capable of performing and the trauma care that they are capable of providing cannot be performed by Ayurveda doctors,” it said.
The apex court said it is also not possible for Ayurveda practitioners to assist surgeons performing complicated surgeries while doctors with MBBS degrees can perform the task.
“We shall not be understood to mean as though one system of medicine is superior to the other. It is not our mandate nor within our competence to assess the relative merits of these two systems of medical sciences. As a matter of fact, we are conscious that the history of Ayurveda dates back to several centuries.
“We have no doubt that every alternative system of medicine may have its pride of place in history. But today, the practitioners of indigenous systems of medicine do not perform complicated surgical operations. A study of Ayurveda does not authorise them to perform these surgeries. Similarly, a post-mortem or autopsy is not carried out by/in the presence of Ayurveda doctors,” it said.
The apex court said it is common knowledge that during out-patient days in general hospitals in cities or towns, doctors with MBBS degrees are made to attend to hundreds of patients, which is not the case for Ayurveda practitioners.
“Therefore, even while recognising the importance of Ayurveda doctors and the need to promote alternative/indigenous systems of medicine, we cannot be oblivious of the fact that both categories of doctors are certainly not performing equal work to be entitled to equal pay,” it said.
New Delhi: Doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences here removed a whistle which had got stuck in the airways of a 4-year-old child after he accidentally aspirated it, through endoscopy.
“Shahin, a native of Nuh distrist in Haryana, was brought to the Mother and Child Block of the hospital Sunday morning,” Dr Prabudh Goel, Additional Professor, Department of Paediatric Surgery said.
He said the child’s father had bought him a pair of slippers which had an inbuilt whistle. The whistle got dislodged and Shahin put it inside his mouth and it landed in his airways, Goel added.
“The child was coughing when he was brought to the emergency ward. He was also in respiratory distress because the airways were compromised… the child was also making a whistling sound while breathing,” the doctor said.
The left main bronchas was okay, the left lung was being aerated and that is the reason the child survived. Additionally, there was movement of air into and out of the right lung through the whistle. The parents told us that it took them about one-and-half hours to reach the hospital.
A foreign body lodged in the main trachea blocking the main airway is an emergency of the highest order, Goel said.
“The child was directly taken to the operation theatre from emergency where we did a bronchoscopy.The bronchoscopy per say is a life and death challenge. Besides that it runs a risk of damage to the brain. There is a possibility we might need to do treacheostomy or a thoracotomy (open chest surgery) in such children,” he said.
AIIMS director Dr M Srinivas was also present during the surgery.
Dr Meenu Bajpai, Head of Department, Paediatric Surgery said such incidents of children coming to the emergency ward after swallowing peanuts, pieces of almonds, beads, safety pins, buttons and batteries are common mostly in children aged below 5-7 years. He said the hospital encounters approximately 100 such cases in a year.
“Through this case presentation, we want to spread awareness that parents should keep such items such as buttons, batteries, small toy whistles, necklace beads, peanuts, almonds and shirt buttons out of the reach of children,” he said.
SRINAGAR: While expressing concern over the rising fatty liver cases in Kashmir, doctors said that the sedentary lifestyle and consumption of junk food is the key reason behind surge in fatty liver cases in Kashmiri population.
A leading oncologist at SKIMS Soura Dr Zahoor said that fatty liver or Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH) has emerged as a major lifestyle disease in the modern world.
“It is mainly associated with intake of high calorie, processed food with poor physical activity and these people usually tend to have high BMI, hypertension and diabetes mellitus,” he said.
Fatty liver can lead to fibrosis of liver and subsequent Chronic Liver Disease (CLD), he said, adding that it is emerging as one of the major causes of liver cancer worldwide overtaking viral hepatitis in causing so.
Dr Mohammad Salim Khan, head of Department of Community Medicine at GMC Srinagar said that the sedentary lifestyle, consumption of junk food, change in dietary pattern with consumption of food rich in fat, salt and sugar, very limited physical activities, stress, indulgence in alcoholism, all are contributing to increasing liver diseases especially fatty liver.
Furthermore, injecting drug use (abuse, addiction) with sharing of needles and syringes has caused an epidemic of viral Hepatitis, especially Hepatitis-C and Hepatitis-B, he said.
In order to prevent this disease, change in lifevstyle is the need of the hour. People should bring a change in their dietary habbits and avoid junk food at earliest, he added.
Srinagar, Apr 19: Sedentary lifestyle and consumption of junk food is the key reason behind surge in fatty liver, doctors said while expressing concern over the rising fatty liver population in Kashmir.
A leading oncologist at SKIMS Soura Dr Zahoor told the news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO) that fatty liver or nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) has emerged as a major lifestyle disease in the modern world.
“It is mainly associated with intake of high calorie, processed food with poor physical activity and these people usually tend to have high BMI, hypertension and diabetes mellitus,” he said.
Fatty liver can lead to fibrosis of liver and subsequent Chronic Liver Disease (CLD), he said, adding that it is emerging as one of the major causes of liver cancer worldwide overtaking viral hepatitis in causing so.
Dr Mohammad Salim Khan, head of Department of Community Medicine at GMC Srinagar at GMC Srinagar told KNO that the sedentary lifestyle, consumption of junk food, change in dietary pattern with consumption of food rich in fat, salt and sugar, very limited physical activities, stress, indulgence in alcoholism, all are contributing to increasing liver diseases especially fatty liver.
Furthermore, injecting drug use (abuse, addiction) with sharing of needles and syringes has caused an epidemic of viral Hepatitis, especially Hepatitis-C and Hepatitis-B, he said.
DAK President Dr Nisar ul Hassan said that junk food is causing a spike in fatty liver cases in the valley as junk food has become a routine part of people’s lives and has largely replaced homemade meals.
“Fast food is the quickest meal not just for busy professionals, but there is a rising trend of fast food among children and teenagers. They are often seen eating fast foods like pizzas and burgers. Children are addicted to chips, sugary drinks and frozen ready meals,” he said.
“This change in dietary habits from homemade to processed and convenient foods is the primary factor contributing to the enormous burden of fatty liver in Kashmir,” he said.
“If you are obese or diabetic, fast food has an even more negative impact on the liver and can lead to even higher amounts of fat in the liver,” he said.
Dr Nisar said one in three persons in Kashmir have fatty liver and young people are mostly hit while the prevalence of disease is 60-70% among diabetics and obese individuals.
People with fatty liver have a greater chance of developing cardiovascular disease, he said.
“In order to prevent this disease, we need to go back to our culture of taking homemade meals and avoid junk food. We need to be on roads and gyms rather than in luxury cars,” Dr Nisar said
