Bengaluru, 23 Aug

The Karnataka government on Friday suggested a slew of measures to be adopted to ensure the safety and security of doctors working in hospitals across the State.

A meeting chaired by Minister for Medical Education Sharanprakash Patil discussed safety measures for doctors, nurses and hospital staff. Members of the doctors’ association were asked to draft a document so that the Department of Medical Education can prepare a standard advisory.

After the recent rape and murder of a woman doctor in Kolkata, which has shocked the entire nation, the safety profile for the working doctors has once again been reviewed, the Director of Medical Education Dr Shobha Rathod said. “On the instructions of our minister, we have held a meeting with all the directors of the government institutes and the super specialty hospitals to identify the gaps in the safety profile for our working doctors,” she told PTI.

According to DME, there are 71 medical colleges including 22 government medical colleges under the Department of Medical Education. Apart from them, there are nursing and paramedical institutes in the state. During the meet, the department also reviewed the safety lapses.

Following the Nirbhaya advisory, the department has been insisting that there are no dark corridors anywhere and all the places should be well lit, Rathod said adding that CCTV cameras should be installed in most of the areas. “The security personnel are the ones who can walk anywhere with the consent in all the areas of the institute, so whether we have a good background check of all these people whom we take under security and housekeeping, that was one issue.”

All the institutes have the Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH) committees, which can also suggest a precautionary measure so that if there is any such incident then an alert can be sounded. Rathod said the POSH committees have been regularly conducting meeting to make sure that there are no incidents of harassment of women. The department is also using Artificial Intelligence for the safety of each doctor.

Self-defence training of the doctors and counseling of medical professionals regarding their stress levels were also discussed, she explained. “We are also encouraging pink boxes so that in case of unbiased complaints, the administration can look into it,” Dr Rathod said.

“Introducing of ‘code white’ system. - If there is something called a code white, which we have already seen, it being worked out in our Indian Institute of nephro-urology, that will make all of them alert, how quickly we can be alerted if there is an untoward incident which is happening,” she added.