Tribune News ServiceChandigarh, April 1
When 25-year-old Gurlal was wheeled into the PGI’s Emergency ward with a spine injury, his attendants were spared the torture of running around arranging medicines.
Instead, his treatment began without the usual scurry to the chemist’s shop and without any fuss courtesy PGI’s new initiative which got off to a smooth start here today.
The latest in a series of patient-friendly initiatives, PGI today introduced a system of providing free ‘first prescription’ medicines to patients being wheeled into the Emergency ward on an experimental basis.
Posters announcing the initiative dotted the entire ward while the Medical and Surgery areas of the wing were well-stocked with life-saving drugs to meet the day’s needs. Since most emergency cases at PGI are about road accidents and heart problems, anti-arrhythmic drugs for heart patients and IV fluids for trauma patients were especially provided for.
The Senior Medical Officer on duty in the ward, Dr Avneesh, said that since space was a constraint, various medicines provided by the hospital authorities under the scheme had been placed in separate compartments.
As today was the first day of this initiative, the ward was provided with extra staff to streamline the working of the new system.
“While 39 surgical consumables have been identified for providing immediate treatment, 25 critical and life-saving medicines, mostly injectables, have also been stocked in the ward. A fund of Rs 13 lakh has been earmarked to meet the requirements of the step,” the Medical Superintendent, Prof A.K. Gupta, said.
Stating that in the past, patients were provided life-saving drugs on replacement basis, the Additional Medical Superintendent, Prof Raj Bahadur, added that while ‘first prescription’ drugs would be provided free of cost to the patients, investigations and minor procedures in the initial 24 hours will also not be charged.
A doctor on emergency duty said that this initiative would help them save on time lost in organising medicines and treatment can begin the moment a patient is wheeled in.
PGI is all set to make a success out of this experimental step in an Emergency ward which gets 100-odd new patients a day and caters to nearly 300 patients at any given time. The PGI plans to extend it beyond the initial one-month deadline if all goes well.
