Protesting the rape and murder of a Post Graduate doctor in Kolkata, Tamil Nadu doctors have voiced the need for safe, well-equipped, and sufficient on-call rooms for doctors to rest inside hospitals. Citing their long working hours, doctors are demanding that the state government and hospital administrations create secure rooms where doctors, especially women, can rest between their shifts.

The Kolkata rape-murder victim had reportedly retired to a seminar room in the hospital on the night of August 9, after having worked a 36-hour shift. The parents of the victim, in their petition submitted to the Calcutta High Court, have said that the on-call room at the hospital was small, lacked ventilation, and was not air-conditioned.  

Protesting against the rape, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) declared a 24-hour nationwide withdrawal of medical services on August 16. 

Doctors who were protesting at Chennai’s Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH), on Friday, August 16, told TNM that sometimes they rest on their desks or even find patients’ beds that are free to sleep on. 

They said that in a hospital where 90 PG doctors are on duty round-the-clock, only one on-call room with three to four beds is available. “At a time, from each department in a hospital, atleast four to five doctors will be on duty. So at any given point in time there will be many doctors, interns and PG doctors in a hospital. In most hospitals, there is only one changing room and one on-call resting room, which are insufficient,” a doctor told TNM. 

Barring a few hospitals such as CMC in Vellore, where doctors have a lounge inside the hospital with biometric attendance, most hospitals lack the infrastructure, the protesting doctors said. 

This infrastructure seems necessary since most medical college hospital’s are located at a distance from hostels. The Doctors Association for Social Equality (DASE)’s general secretary Ravindran said, “Hostels for undergraduate, postgraduate, higher specialty medical students, and trainee doctors in medical colleges should be set up within or very close to the medical college hospital campus.”

Dr Anagha, who completed her house surgency from the Kozhikode Government Medical College in Kerala, told TNM that long shifts without proper rest is an issue faced by most medical professionals. However, the conditions of the PG students are worse, she said.

“We don’t get enough time to eat, sleep, or rest. Most of the time, PG students would have 36 or more hours of duty. Imagine what deep sleep we would be in after a long shift, we wouldn’t be able to sense it even if someone came to attack us. We don’t have a proper space to rest or sleep. Sometimes, we even rest in the storerooms of the ICU. We are forced to rest wherever there is space available. Sometimes it is not even possible to lock the room where we rest, allowing anyone to come in. At some hospitals, the PG students have a separate resting room, house surgeons don’t have that luxury,” Anagha said.

Why are students forced to perform such long shifts? “Inadequate staff is an important issue,” Anagha said. 

Dr Shanthi of Doctors Association for Social Equality (DASE) told TNM that there has been a visible increase in the number of patients who seek treatment at government hospitals since the COVID-19 pandemic. “The problem is that there has been no proportionate increase in staff across the country, directly increasing the strain on the doctors,” she said.

Anagha also flagged the need for a safety audit in government hospitals. “I think it is high time. Safety audits will provide insights to the policymakers to understand and address the issues,” she said. 

Kerala Medical Post Graduates Association (KMPGA) president Dr Unni R Pillai told TNM that the KMPGA has submitted a memorandum to Health Minister Veena George demanding immediate security audits in all medical colleges in the state. “We asked the government to escalate the pressure on the Union Ministry, since the resident doctors are on strike. We will also be conducting an internal security audit at our level and submit the report,” he added.