Government hospitals known for bad maintenance

One may be easily mistaken by the serene look of government hospitals spread across the heart of the city. But make no mistake about it -- these government hospitals are known for bad maintenance. Name it. Toilets to corridors to balconies are dirty, unwashed and stinking.

Such a condition exists although the hospitals are adequately staffed, at least on the record. In reality, only ghostly figures exist in attendance registers.

Several employees in government hospitals are simply names on paper who are non-existent. Some simply draw salaries and never come to work.

The wage register at Vani Vilas Hospital for February and March shows 59 names of workers under the housekeeping section. But 21 of them don't exist. Salaries of imaginary employees are then regularly drawn by hospital officials and contractors.

The Unorganized Sector Labour Unit has filed a complaint with Lokayukta Justice N Santosh Hegde, medical education secretary, dean and director of BMCRI, and vice-chancellor of RGUHS.

"Payment to contractors is based on the attendance register certified by the matron, resident medical officer and other hospital officials. Contractors have been misusing BMCRI funds for long," the unorganised sector labour union's president Prem Kumar told The Times of India.

According to the Minimum Wages Act, wages must be paid in presence of authorized hospital representatives and persons who can endorse that the minimum wage has been paid.

No government hospital TOI visited followed this rule. According to the Act, wages must be paid on working days before the 7th of every month. Sources, however, confirmed that wages are paid on second Saturdays or Sundays.

Existing staff and even hard-working employees find it difficult to work properly due to this racket. Some contract workers recruited for sweeping and cleaning are used as ward boys, kitchen attendants and labour ward cleaners. These complicated tasks are supposed to be handled by skilled, permanent hospital staff.

"We had 230 Group D posts sanctioned. Of this, 125 are outsourced and the rest (105 personnel) are permanent. I can't assure if all of them are working here. We've many supervisors in the hospital to look into each department. But we can launch an investigation only based on a complaint,"

Vani Vilas Hospital medical superintendent O S Siddappa told TOI. "You should ask BMCRI authorities are because they're in charge of recruiting contractors," Siddappa added.

"We've found deficiency in the workforce as well as deviation and violation in the contract. Last week, on receiving a bill from a contractor and finding misappropriation, we visited Vani Vilas Hospital and paid only those workers who were actually working at the hospital," said BMCRI dean and director G T Subhash.

"I've written to the medical superintendent to investigate the matter, and if need be, we will cancel the tender and blacklist the contractor," Subhash added.

Bifurcation will reduce load on RGUHS

Minister for Medical Education Ramachandre Gowda, on Monday said that the State cabinet will look into the bifurcation of the Rajiv Gandhi University for Health Sciences (RGUHS) to ease the administrative constraints arising from the large number of colleges under it. The minister also noted that the government was waiting for a response from the University’s Syndicate before proceeding with action against those found guilty of irregularities in evaluation of answer papers.

Responding to a query raised in the Legislative Council, the minister said that, the three-member committee which was constituted after large differences in marks were found in the first valuation and revaluation of the answer papers of the exams held in December 2008 and January 2009, has submitted its report.

The report has been sent to the RGUHS Syndicate to elicit its recommendation; the government is committed to taking action on the issue, he said.

The minister also clarified that the recent change in rules effected by its syndicate pertained to expanding the scope for re-valuation. In the wake of irregularities (as mentioned above) students needed to clear doubts if any and the rule was changed to help students applying for re-valuation.

Changes soon in RGUHS examination process: VC

• Electronic despatch of question papers to be introduced
• Committee set up to monitor erring evaluators
• University needs 5,000 more teachers
  

Vice-Chancellor of the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) S. Ramananda Shetty has said that RGUHS will now send question papers to colleges by email just minutes before examinations begin and tabulation of results will be done on computers and sent back to the university by email. The university had now introduced this system in postgraduate courses and it was a successful move. “We will soon introduce the system in undergraduate courses and manual entry of marks will stop,” he added.

Dr. Shetty claimed that RGUHS was the only university in the country which had formed a “professional misconduct committee” to monitor erring valuators.

Speaking to The Hindu here on Tuesday, he recalled that in a particular case, one evaluator had given a student 14 marks for an answer, while the question itself was for only 10 marks. The university this year had debarred 17 such evaluators who were not professional. “We also blacklist evaluators and try not to invite them for evaluation work as far as possible,” he added.

Dr. Shetty said the university had also introduced a facility whereby a student could contest his evaluation process, by paying a prescribed fee of Rs. 5,000 per paper. A copy of the answer script would be sent for re-evaluation and if the candidate were to get more marks, the fees paid would be refunded.

Dr. Shetty said that over 650 institutions including those teaching medicine, nursing and alternative therapies would soon come under the purview of university. Of them, 50 per cent were nursing colleges (323). For nursing colleges, recognition from the Indian Nursing Council (INC) and the Karnataka Nursing Council (KNC) was mandatory. “Some colleges do not have INC permission to conduct courses. Students from these colleges will not be eligible for employment in places where recognition is mandatory. The RGUHS has sent such a list to the State Government requesting it not to admit students to these colleges,” he added.

On the relocation of the university to Ramanagara, Dr. Shetty said, “The Government promised to give us 300 acres of land. Now 142 acres has been acquired but farmers have gone to court seeking a stay on the acquisition of the remaining land. Once the land is fully acquired, we will shift to the new campus.”

He said the Central Committee for Indian Medicine wrote to the university last year asking the authorities not to admit students to 28 Ayurveda colleges in the State as they did not have any infrastructure. By then, the admissions were already over. The university wrote to the CCIM stating that the admissions were already over and hence they may be permitted to continue. As many as 1,400 students were admitted to these colleges.

Dr. Shetty said there were 18,000 teaching staff working in colleges, teaching medicine and alternative forms of therapy, but the university needed another 5,000. The number of postgraduate seats would also be increased, he added.

He said there would be no problems as far as fresh admissions to Government Medical Colleges in Hassan, Shimoga, Mandya, Raichur, Bidar and Belgaum were concerned. The Medical Council of India would be meeting in Delhi on June 10 and would send renewal of recognition letters to the Karnataka Government. Seats in these colleges were available for the first round of counselling, he added.

Principal of SDM College of Ayurveda Prasanna N. Rao was present.

Four MBBS candidates tampered with answer booklets

A teacher correcting the answer script of an MBBS student, originally of the 1996-97 batch, was baffled. After failing to clear the exam till now, the candidate finally resorted to malpractice, a glaring one at that.

The student had not only copied every single word from a textbook, but also the punctuation marks. Moreover, investigation revealed a clear difference in handwriting in the internal assessment answer sheet and the university exam answer booklet.

The incident came to light in May when some candidates' answer scripts were sent for revaluation. The exam was conducted in January. Suspicious over the way the answers were worded, the valuator informed his principal, who lodged complaint with Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences. The principal also sent documentary evidence for the doubts.

The university found the answer script came from a medical college
in Kolar. RGUHS confiscated the IA answer sheets in all subjects of the entire batch, suspecting there could be more than one such case. "When we went through the answer scripts we could clearly make out they were tampered with. We have found three more students tampered with the answer scripts," RGUHS registrar S Vasantha Kumar said.

The university constituted a fact-finding committee headed by MVJ Medical College dean Dr Rajeshwari. The panel submitted its report in the last week of May, concluding that there is prima facie evidence indicating malpractice. The report was placed before the syndicate in June, where it was resolved that criminal cases will be filed against the candidates.

Workshop/Convention on Global Challenges on Patient Safety

You are cordially invited to attend a workshop / convention on patient safety organized under the WHO initiative on patient safety[Global patient safety challenges I & II] at API Bhavan, 16/F Millers Tank Bed Area, Vasanth Nagar, Bangalore – 560 052 on Sunday 26th July 2009.

Experts from WHO will give presentations and there will be a symposium by the local faculty on safety interventions in surgical practice. This program will be useful for all healthcare professionals – doctors, nurses, paramedical staff and administrators and the discussion and deliberation will no doubt improve patient care.

Justice N Santhosh Hegde, Chairman Lokayuktha will inaugurate the function and Dr.M S Sidde Gowda, President, IMA Karnataka state will be guest of honor.

There is no delegate fee for attending and no restriction on the numbers. The Program starts at 10.00 AM and ends by 5.00 PM.

For Further details contact:
Dr.U Vasudeva Rao, Consultant Surgeon, Manipal Hospital, Bangalore
Ph:25024517 Mob:9901919167

3 Member Committee Submits Report on Lapses During Valuation

The three-member committee that was constituted to probe the lapses during valuation at Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) submitted the report to the state government recently.

The committee, which is led by director to Medical Education and university’s Syndicate member Dr Aruna submitted the report.

Even while the report was being submitted, the committed came under the eye of a storm.

According to university officials, it doesn’t make much of a sense to appoint a Syndicate member to conduct inquiry on the decision that was taken under syndicate members presence.

“Instead, a retired judge or academician should have been appointed,” an official said.

Why the committee?

The committee was constituted on June 6, following some students’ complaints over alleged goof-ups during valuation of exams conducted during December 2008 and January 2009.

Irregularities

Many irregularities are said to have crept during valuation.

The committee had reported that a dental student was awarded more marks than the maximum marks allotted. In few answer scripts, even though students have written answers, the valuators have mentioned that there is no answer.

In another case, a student got revaluation result in one day, while many students are waiting for their revaluation results for the past three months.

Committee’s recommendations

The Committee has recommended the state government to blacklist those valuators who involved in such malpractices.

Model answer scripts need to be issued.

The committee also recommended reduction in the revaluation fee from Rs 1,000 to Rs 500.

PGET 2009 - Allotted Candidate List

Allotted Candidates List - Medical - Download The File