If you are a Doctor and a new entrant to the public health service, I must congratulate you first of all for making this decision. As a part of the primary health care system in the country every doctor has been entrusted with many responsibilities, and you are no exception!. In this post I will be making you familiar with those duties and responsibilities. If you are not a Doctor, or a health worker, don’t go away. This post doesn’t contain any unbreakable medical terminologies and can be easily grasped by lay man. Try to make yourselves aware of the functioning of a public hospital.
Meet the Health Workers
Life would have been easier if my job was just to conduct the OPD and be done with it, but as the Medical Officer in charge of the hospital, there is a long list of extra responsibilities entrusted upon me. This mostly includes Administrative duties and social responsibilities.
In order to understand the process of administration in a hospital, one should be familiar with the staff pattern of the hospital. So let’s start from there.
Climbing the mountain to “Salary”
Getting a Government job in Kerala is a big thing. The salary package and the very popular “Pension” schemes are the main components which attracts the civilians in Kerala towards a Government job. Getting the job is the first step, but what about getting the first salary?
I had promised you to share all the
documents and steps which were needed to get the salary. I mean you work to
earn, right? Back in the days when I used to work at the private medical
college, it was as simple as signing a simple voucher and the clerk would hand
over your month’s earnings in cheque/cash whichever form you desire.
One shot, two Hospitals !
“We have
another hospital under us” said my Medical Officer,
another hospital under us” said my Medical Officer,
“What?” I asked in surprise,
“Yes, we have a Fisheries hospital which is also a Primary Health Centre” she said with a sluggish grin.
Train to Payangadi
There are thousands of daily train commuters around the world who use the train to reach their workplace. I was one of them for almost one full year. In this article, I share my train and work experiences and I dedicate this article to all the train lovers.
My job as the Assistant Surgeon was very simple – just manage the OP at the hospital. And I was doing it without much problem either. The OP time started at 9am and extended till 1pm. By OP I mean ‘Out Patients’. On some days the consultation would even extend to 2pm. The problem was that the hospital was around 120 kms from my home !!!
Drama at the District Office
It was a very
old building, the architecture of the building clearly stated that it was at least
50 years old. We were at the DMO Office, Kannur. Guess, what the name of the
place is? Its known as the “Caltex” .. cool huh? By the time we reached there a
battle had just been fought and the dust had settled down.
old building, the architecture of the building clearly stated that it was at least
50 years old. We were at the DMO Office, Kannur. Guess, what the name of the
place is? Its known as the “Caltex” .. cool huh? By the time we reached there a
battle had just been fought and the dust had settled down.
The Counselling Day Fortune
I had a pdf file containing the list of all the Government hospitals in Kerala with me. Nisanth had a map of Kerala with him. Anoop had managed to get a list of PHCs in Kannur district, from the DMO Office. Because we knew that it was practically impossible to get posted in our home district, Kozhikode. I had taken my ‘playbook’ tablet with me. We were in the ‘Janshathabdi’ express bound to Trivandrum, that too two days prior to the day of counseling. The other passengers were all glaring at the three of us while we were busy making notes, firing funny stuff about the ridiculously named places.
The hospitals as usual are named after the place where they are located. We looked up the name of the places which we were not sure of and then checked on the map as to whether they were accessible by train/road. It was kind of funny memorizing the names of places. After making a list of almost three districts around Kozhikode, we decided to leave the rest to our luck.