Resident Doc Suicide attempt Row:
Every department’s collegium will have a student representative as a part of it: Director, PGIMER
Amid a lot of Social media bashing, placing an Associate professor’s photo on social media calling him a “toxic professor”, PGIMER Resident Suicide attempt row settled amicably. In this whole matter, it was observed that the Resident association jumped the gun without completely understanding the matter. Whereas the Associate professor maturely handled the case and apologize to the student and amicably settled the unnecessarily escalated matter by the residents of PGI.
“Every department in PGIMER will have a student representative from that respective department as a part of its collegium system. This will surely prove to be game–changer,” stated Prof. Vivek Lal, Director PGIMER at a press conference organized to brief the media about a sad incident involving a resident doctor and the measures being taken to prevent such incidents in the future, here at PGIMER today.
A few days ago, a DM pursuing Resident Doctor from Hepatology tried to commit suicide over a ‘petty’ issue. He wrote a suicide letter accusing an Associate professor of humiliating him as he (the resident doctor) was not treating a patient correctly. Resident Doctor accuse his professor of making personal remarks stating, “Had the patient been your father, would you treat him this way”.
“Having student representation in the decision-making process is a quantum leap forward as far as the well-being of the resident doctors is concerned as till date, residents have not been a part of any of the committees in the institute,” added Prof. Lal.
Prof. N.K. Panda, Dean (Academics), Mr. Kumar Gaurav Dhawan, Deputy Director (Administration) & Official Spokesperson, Prof. Ajay Duseja, Head, Deptt. of Hepatology, Prof. Dheeraj Khurana, Deptt. of Neurology, Prof. Sameer Aggarwal, Deptt. of Orthopaedics and President, PGIMER Faculty Association, Prof. Aman Sharma, Deptt. of Internal Medicine, Dr. Naveen, President ARD and other senior faculty members were also present on the occasion.
Expressing his satisfaction at the amicable resolution of an untoward incident of attempted suicide by a resident doctor on the alleged harassment by a faculty member from Deptt. of Hepatology, Prof. Vivek Lal further stated, “PGI runs on two pillars both faculty and residents and both are very important for the smooth running of the hospital. So the intent was not to punish, but to smother the fire, mitigate the stress, send the right message, and build a bond between the faculty and residents.
”The Director further elaborated, “Immediately after the incident, the concerned faculty regretted for overstepping and tendered a written apology to the student and his parents, a gesture, first of its kind. Not only that, the faculty has been overwhelming in their response enquiring about the well-being of the student. Both the associations, residents as well as faculty, showed restraint, did not resort to strikes or wore black badges, but rather cooperated fully to the committee during its fact-finding. Even the parents of the concerned resident exhibited exemplary cooperation and he has joined back his duty. So it is win for PGIMER, a win for Guru-Shishya parampara.”
“Even out of this sad incident, a good has come out as the existing wall between the faculty and residents has been dismantled, which reiterates that we are moving in the right direction,” said the Director PGIMER as he enumerated a plethora of welfare measures being taken by the PGIMER administration for its resident doctors.The welfare measures include refurbishment of the Upper Café, conversion of a swimming pool into all weather pool, and building of a food court on the poolside and living room for junior residents to mention a few.
“The end objective is to build a bond, a bonhomie and a camaraderie between the faculty and the residents so that we together meet our sole common objective of patient care and this amicable resolution of the issue a step forward in that direction,” aptly concluded Director, PGIMER.