Health department asks CM to hire 100 more trainee doctors for JPMC

On Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre executive director’s request, the provincial health secretary urged the chief minister on Tuesday to appoint 100 postgraduate trainees at the hospital to overcome the shortage of doctors there.

Postgraduate trainees are MBBS doctors recruited by tertiary-care hospitals for specialised training either in the field of medicine or surgery. During their training, they work as registrars, resident medical officers, assist surgeons, work at the casualty department and run the hospital in the absence of their seniors.

Health secretary Dr Fazlullah Pechuho wrote to Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah that there were only 98 registrars and medical officers at the JPMC against the sanctioned posts of 209. He requested the appointment of 100 more postgraduate trainees for the JPMC as it was facing an acute shortage of staff.

Citing JPMC executive director Dr Seemin Jamali, the health secretary wrote that provincial health minister Dr Sikandar Mandhro had announced the appointment of 100 more postgraduate trainees for the JPMC last month to meet the shortage of doctors and improve patient-care at the tertiary-care hospital.

Right now there are 360 postgraduate trainees at the JPMC and around 113 house officers but they are not enough to meet the workload there as thousands of patients in Karachi and from rural Sindh and even Balochistan visit the hospital.

The secretary wrote that each postgraduate trainee was given a stipend of Rs.65,000 per month and the induction of 100 more would cost Rs78 million to the provincial exchequer. The secretary recommended the chief minister to approve the summary at the earliest.

Dr Jamali described the forwarding of the summary for the induction of 100 postgraduate trainees as a “good omen”. She said it would help in providing better healthcare to patients.

“Because of the ban on recruitment on the apex court’s orders, we can only meet our requirement of doctors by inducting more postgraduate trainees as they can work as registrars and resident medical officers. They assist surgeons in surgeries, they work at our casualty department and also serve at various other wards,” she added.

Currently, the postgraduate trainees at the Civil Hospital Karachi have been protesting for an increase in their stipends from Rs42,500 to 65,000 per month similar to what their colleagues at the JPMC receive.

The trainees are demanding that their salaries should be disbursed as per the revised stipend announced in a government notification. They said their colleagues at the JPMC and the National Institute of Child Health were being paid Rs65,000 while those serving at CHK and other hospitals in the province were being paid 42,500 for the same job even though they possessed the same qualification, which was an injustice to them.

Even the doctors at the JPMC and the NICH who are being paid revised stipends say that would join their protesting colleagues at the CHK and other cities of Sindh.