After talks collapse with West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, hospital heads look at long haul

KOLKATA: Even as junior doctors met CM Mamata Banerjee at her residence on Saturday but stuck to their demand for live-streaming, an opportunity for breaking the deadlock was lost, felt a section of senior city medicos. Principals, senior teachers and doctors of government medical colleges, who have been working overtime to fill in for their junior colleagues on agitation, prepared for the worst even as they hoped for a breakthrough.
But in the end it was not be, as the meeting was called off and chief minister Mamata Banerjee retreated into her residence after a seven-minute chat with the doctors.
A long haul is in the offing and they must prepare for it, said hospital administrators of govt medical colleges and faculty members who had started seeing a ray of hope when the CM invited junior doctors on Saturday afternoon.

But the stalemate continued with another chance of a dialogue being snapped by the demand for live-streaming by the junior doctors. Senior doctors as well as hospital administrations who were tracking the entire episode were left disgruntled at the end of the day.
“Even as no government hospital should depend on trainee doctors for smooth functioning due to the faulty healthcare system, they serve as a backbone. We were hoping for the stalemate to end as we need our junior doctors back on duty. But all hopes were dashed due to the stance of both sides,” said the senior administrator of a medical college.
In all medical colleges, ratio of faculty and PGTs is around 1:4, higher in departments where vacancies have not been filled up for years. For over a month since the cease-work began, senior doctors have been spending as long as two to three days a week in the hospital to fill the void left by the absence of junior doctors. The hospitals will continue the senior doctors’ roster as it is now till the juniors resume duty.
“We all have been putting that extra hours so that patient care does not hamper and also in support of their movement. But now it is over a month and it is becoming increasingly difficult. Either the CM or the junior doctors has to take a step back to ensure a dialogue to end impasse,” said a head of a department at IPGMER.
Managing of patient flow was not difficult in the beginning but as the patient volume in the OPD is almost near normal now, the pressure on senior doctors has increased.
“Even patient admissions are picking up. We were really hopeful of the knot untied today. At the same time the government has also unnecessarily tried to blame some deaths on junior doctors which is not true. In fact, in most of those hospitals where the deaths happened there are no juniors as they are not even medical colleges,” said a principal of a medical college in Kolkata.
Most medical college officials said that death rates have come down drastically in majority of departments as seniors are available round-the-clock since the cease-work began. “The CM herself had set a precedent of live-streaming of administrative meetings. What could have been harmed if the juniors were allowed to record the proceedings?” said a department head at Medical College Hospital Kolkata.
Some doctors in government hospitals rued that some seniors in touch with the juniors are not advising them the right way. “Many of these seniors do not even work in government hospitals and don’t understand the kind of load we are taking,” said another department head at IPGMER.
Since the ice have started melting from both sides, hospital heads still believe an end in the next few days.