Relieve resident doctors who do night duty, work for 24 hours: PGIMER director to dept heads

“The residents who are perusing their MD/MS/DM-MCH etc courses in the various specialists of the institute perusing night duty and after having worked for 24 hours at a stretch be relieved quickly and further they will be allowed rest for half of the day,” reads the order issued by the PGI director recently.

As per the resident doctors, each of the doctors has to perform duty for more than 12 hours. “If a doctor starts working at 8 in the evening, he has to be relieved from his duty at 8 in the morning,” said a resident doctor. “But in most of the cases, the resident doctors continue the duty till 11 in the morning and sometimes the duty hours go up to 1 pm. There should be proper management by the administration to relieve the resident doctors after completing the shift.” The doctor added that they were working for more hours than listed in the guidelines.

While, according to the resident doctors, the ARD had demanded that the doctors should get a full-day off after doing a duty for 24 hours, the PGI administration in the order has asked the department heads that the doctor should be allowed rest for “half of the day”.

“We have received the order. I will discuss our demands with the director again,” said Dr Pulkit Rastogi, president of the PGI’s Association of Resident Doctors. “The order hasn’t met our full demands.”