CHENNAI:Tamil Nadu health department will hold a meeting of surgeons of government hospitals including district surgeons and assistant surgeons. This is following the surgery for a ligament tear of a teen footballer who developed an infection after the surgery, and due to which, her right leg had to be amputated, leading to her death by multi organ failure on Tuesday.
The state health minister, Ma Subramanian told IANS that the state government has not fixed any surgery targets for doctors. He also said that an audit for every surgery is essential and added that such an audit is done in Tamil Nadu on infant and maternal deaths.
The state health department is for training doctors to be equipped for such surgery audits and the meeting to be held on next week in Chennai will have detailed discussions on surgeries.
There were allegations that government hospital surgeons were facing huge work pressure and in some extreme cases, surgeries end up failing and doctors get blamed for it.
A senior surgeon with a government hospital in Chennai, while speaking to IANS said: "Surgeons are working overtime and overload is mostly on doctors. The fatigue that can happen to a doctor cannot be fathomed and occasionally this leads to the concerned doctor losing his way during a procedure affecting the patient. While doctors can never fail technically, the long and arduous work in operation theatres makes doctors vulnerable. Anyway, the government is now planning a surgical audit and we welcome this move. However, the government must ensure that we doctors are also treated on a level playing field."
The passing away of the budding footballer over the botched surgery has led to the doctors' community being targeted and the state health department is conducting the meeting of surgeons to make it clear that doctors will be provided with proper guidance on surgery audit.