10 faculty members of LRH promoted after long struggle

PESHAWAR: After years of non-stop struggle and wait, the Board of Governors (BoG) finally promoted 10 faculty members of the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) as professors and associate professors.

This is probably the first batch of faculty in the LRH that got promoted as per the Medical Teaching Institution (MTI) promotion criteria.Getting promotion in the MTI rules was made an uphill task for the doctors serving in the MTIs, prompting many senior doctors to seek retirement instead of applying for promotion.

Some of the doctors were eligible for promotion to upper grades as per Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PM&DC) rules, but they stuck following the implementation of the MTI rules and thus retired as assistant professors and associate professors. Unlike the MTI criteria, senior registrar-ship is considered both for experience and promotion.

As per PM&DC rules, a faculty member is promoted to the rank of associate professor after five years of experience as assistant professor. Similarly, after three years of service as associate professor, a faculty member becomes a professor. According to the faculty members, their promotions were delayed for four to five years, saying most of them have become assistant professors in 2016. The new rules mostly affected the doctors in LRH, where Dr Nausherwan Burki, the architect of so-called health reforms, had strictly implemented his MTI Act. It discouraged some of the doctors and they quit their jobs in LRH and joined other MTIs, apparently for a better working environment there.

The LRH BoG promoted all the 10 doctors as per the tough MTI rules.Among these 10 doctors promoted on Tuesday, four of them including Dr Sher Bahadar Khan, Mohammad Adil, Dr Jabar Ali, and Dr Kamran Hassan were institutional employees or members of old faculty, serving in LRH prior to the MTI Act.

The remaining six doctors were MTI employees. Among them, a noted interventional cardiologist, Dr Sher Bahadar Khan was the only one faculty member who became a professor. He was the senior most member of his department and is known for his skills, professionalism and evidence based practice in his community.

Similarly, those promoted from assistant professors to associate professors included Dr Mohammad Adil, cardiologist, Dr Jabbar Ali, cardiologist, Dr Asif Iqbal, cardiologist, Dr Shamsur Rahman, orthopaedics, Dr Mohammad Idrees, ophthalmology, Dr Kamran Hassan, a prominent gastroenterologist, Dr Shahzadi Saima, gynaecologist, Dr Nazia Liaqat, gynaecologist, and Dr Wajeeha Syed, also gynaecologist.