New Delhi: A prolonged delay in postgraduate admissions has irked resident doctors across the country.
They complain that they’re short staffed because there aren’t any new doctors coming on board, and they’re mentally and physically exhausted from working with fewer hands through the pandemic.
The NEET postgraduate entrance exam for 2021 was delayed twice, from January to April, and then to September, when it was eventually held. But now, admissions have been delayed once again.
This delay is due to the dispute over revising the income criteria for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) quota from the current upper limit of Rs. 8 lakh a year. The case is before the Supreme Court, which held hearings earlier this year. The next date is only in January 2022.
Meanwhile, the Centre has decided to constitute a committee to determine the EWS criteria, which will take four weeks to file a report. This will delay the counselling process of postgraduate doctors by another month.
Twenty-seven-year-old Vibhav Kanth, one of the affected doctors, told ThePrint, “Postgraduate students have to clear three years of junior residency to get their degree qualification. As a first-year student, I have already spent 17 months instead of the mandated 12.”
“There is no first-year batch this year because the NEET post-graduation exam was delayed. We don’t know if we are first or second-year residents because we’re doing the work of both,” said Kanth, a resident doctor at the department of radiation oncology, Aligarh Muslim University.
Also read: 3 Centre-run Delhi hospitals suspend OPD services over delayed NEET 2021 counselling
Doctors stop OPD services to protest against “uncertainty”
Doctors across several states including Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, and Telangana have stopped services at outpatient departments (OPD) to mark their protest over the incessant delays and uncertainty in postgraduate admissions.
Kanth, one of the protesting doctors, said, “We shut down operations on 29 November. Our intention was not to cause trouble for the patients, which is why we did a mock boycott for two days so that the administration could get proxy staff to fill in for us.”
He added, “But now that the Supreme Court will only ‘review’ the ministry’s reservation report in January next year, we don’t know when the counselling results will finally be declared. If no solution is found, we have no other option but to continue our protest.”
The delay in holding the exam and completing the admission process has meant that hospitals across the country are functioning with just two-thirds of their staff, protesting resident doctors told ThePrint.
The doctors said that the mental and physical exhaustion of working through the two waves of COVID-19, and the fear of another one to come, has taken a toll on them.
Resident doctors at Delhi’s Ram Manohar Lohia hospital gathered in protest Friday morning and boycotted OPD services, elective operation theatre services, and wards to express their anger over the delay.
Atul Tiwari, president of the hospital’s Resident Doctors’ Association, told ThePrint, “We are short of an entire batch of about 240 resident doctors owing to the delayed NEET PG counselling. We have been working tirelessly for the last two years due to the pandemic. The pressure and mental exhaustion are immense.”
“If no dialogue happens between the ministries and the Supreme Court, we will be forced to escalate our protest and shut emergency operations as well,” he added.
Several hospitals in Delhi have shut their OPD wards as a mark of protest, including Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital, Lady Hardinge Hospital, Safdarjung Hospital, Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital, Ambedkar Hospital, and Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital.
Standing in solidarity
While doctors in southern states have suspended operations in solidarity with resident doctors across the country, doctors in Karnataka went on strike demanding increased remuneration from the state government. State Health Minister K. Sudhakar agreed to meet their demands Friday.
Although that strike has now been called off, doctors at seven hospitals in Karnataka have decided to suspend operations. They’re joining the protest against the delay in postgraduate admissions, said Tejas, a doctor at the Vijayanagar Institute of Medical Sciences, Bellary, Karnataka.
He said, “Our demand for fair remuneration has been met by the state health minister, but we stand with the doctors in the rest of the country regarding the NEET PG issue. We understand that the legal process will take time, but why not run the exam with the old system of reservation till the time a decision is made?”
ThePrint reached out to Additional Director General of Medical Education Dr. Srinivas Rao over the phone and through messages, but he is yet to respond to the queries.
(Edited by Rohan Manoj)
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