Mumbai: Resident doctors of JJ Hospital's Ophthalmology department allege injustice, committee to inquire

The resident doctors of one of the apex medical institutes of Maharashtra have submitted a written complaint against one of the top faculty doctors of the Ophthalmology department stating that there is alleged lack of surgical and academic opportunities The top faculty has refuted all the allegations levied by resident doctors and have said that the reply was submitted to the deanMeanwhile the dean has set up a threemember committee to investigate the matterThe Ophthalmology department of the JJ Hospital is said to be one of the busiest departments as patients not only from Mumbai but from other districts of the state visit for treatmentThe resident doctors of the department have complaints of alleged injustice The letter written by the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors MARD to the dean states The resident doctors of department of Ophthalmology JJH have raised their concerns and complaints The complaints range from lack of surgical opportunities lack of academics lack of research activity and impolite behaviour that the residents face on a regular basis in the department The primary demand of the resident doctors is that the department should run as per the NMC guidelines which at present is not happeningThe letter further reads JJ MARD wants to reemphasize that it will not tolerate any form of oppression of its member residents and fight for their right to education and dignityThe letter written by Junior residents says Dr T P Lahane Ex dean and Ex DMER director currently holding no post along with the cooperation of head of the department have been running the department dictatorially in a fashion that clearly violates the NMC guidelines at multiple levels The two surgeons do almost all the surgeries that are conducted in the department majorly consisting of the cataract surgeries Despite JJ Hospital being a teaching institute extremely negligible attention is paid to the academics of the residents The sole purpose of residents in this department is to make life easier for the above surgeons while doing all the perioperative and ward work There is a serious shortfall of faculty count in the department Despite being one of the apex institutes of the country where a huge number of cataractsurgeries are done annually it is shocking to say the least the current JR 2 batch 12 months and JR 1 batch 5 months the total number of cataract surgeries of the combined two batches is zeroThe letter also demanded an inquiry in the matterWhen contacted Dr TP Lahane refuted the claim of resident doctors he said These all are false claims We are teaching them as per the NMC norms All the 13 resident doctors of the third year have given us in writing that we have taught them surgeries The firstyear doctors who didnt even complete their 6 months how can we allow them to operate without proper training after all it is a matter of sight We have filed our reply to the deanDean of JJ group of hospital and Grant Medical College Dr Pallavi Saple said I have received the complaint letter from the members of MARD I have formed a committee headed by three senior professors to investigate the matter