Patient flow plummets in Ernakulam Medical College

There has been a fall in the flow of out-patients and in-patients to Government Medical College, Ernakulam, in recent months - possibly a fallout of media reports on the suspected outbreak of hospital-acquired infections there.

There has been a drop of over 3,000 patients if numbers of patients reaching the medical college OP departments in August (23,620) and October (20,497) are compared. A decline of nearly 400 patients in the IP could be found from August (1,509) to October (1,128).

The numbers are not too drastic, but the reasons could be attributed to a lot of bad publicity for the medical college and the fact that one of the theatre-complex has been shut for a month now, say officials in the medical college. It was reported widely that there were a few patients from the orthopaedic and gynaecology post-operative wards who had developed infections in the hospital.

The theatre-complex on the second floor of the medical college will be opened only after it gets a new coat of paint after all the maintenance works are rechecked. Maintenance of other operation theatres will be followed.

Both the theatre complexes together used to carry out 8-12 surgeries a day. Now only 3-4 major surgeries are planned providing room for emergency surgeries. Endoscopy and minor surgeries are being taken up at theatres located above the casualty.

The medical college hospital was taking all precautions to keep hospital infections away, said hospital Superintendent K.G.R. Mallan. Allegations regarding hospital-acquired infection in surgical ward and neonatal care unit had brought in experts from Thiruvananthapuram Medical College to check the microbial activity in the hospital.

All healthcare professionals in the medical college here (one doctor and two nurses) who were found to carry Methiciline-resistant Staphylococus aureus (MRSA) bacteria have been asked to get treatment even though they may not be having any infection.

The Microbiology department regularly checked the sensitivity of the microbes in the hospital and reported accordingly the level of antibiotics that were to be used, said the microbiologist at the hospital. “We restrict the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics”. All hospitals have certain microbes and the nature of the microbes vary according to the type of hospital. All tertiary care hospitals have a different microbial infection management in place, said the microbiologist.

Uncontained microbial activity in hospital environment could result in the use of higher levels of antibiotics that are more expensive. Patient care would also become more difficult as most antibiotics have some side-effects.