PANAJI: In an unprecedented show of strength, over 600 doctors, consultants, and interns of Goa Medical College staged a protest on the campus on Monday demanding a public apology from health minister Vishwajit Rane at the same casualty department for abusing and threatening Rudresh Kuttikar and gave the minister a 24-hour ultimatum or face a strike.The doctors’ ultimatum came after Rane “extended heartfelt apology to Kuttikar for the harsh words” spoken by him on Saturday. But Kuttikar and the Goa Association of Resident Doctors (GARD) rejected Rane’s apology on social media and demanded a public apology at the same place where the incident took place, and a video of the apology to be made viral in the same way the first video was.GARD said that it “cannot and will not stand by while the dignity of our profession is trampled upon”. The doctors also demanded an end to VIP culture, a total ban on videography in patient care areas, and assurance from govt that no healthcare professional will ever be subjected to such a “degrading and arbitrary ordeal” again.The doctors also demanded the immediate and unconditional revocation of Kuttikar’s suspension, but dean S M Bandekar said there was no suspension order issued, no note moved, and no inquiry initiated against him. GARD presented a list of five demands to the dean, who called for a meeting of all heads of departments to discuss the issue.After the meeting, Bandekar told reporters that this was the “first incident” of this scale at GMC. “Something like this has never happened before on such a scale… and it is escalating. Somewhere we need to preserve this institution. It is one of the greatest in the country, and we cannot allow it to go for a toss,” he said, adding that many OPDs were delayed due to the protest on Monday.GARD president Aayush Sharma, however, countered the dean’s assertion, and said that no emergency or elective services were stopped, and that doctors attended to patients. He called for an end to VIP culture and said that on the same night following the Rane incident, four medical residents of the medicine department were verbally assaulted, threatened, and videographed by a patient’s relatives, who threatened to send the video to higher authorities and get them all fired. All doctors, especially the junior-most doctors at GMC, face regular threats from various higher authorities via someone, he said.“Everyone wants their patient to be treated first, and there’s no respect for hospital protocol or the triage system, where doctors decide which patient to attend to first,” he said. The VIP culture is prevalent all around India, said Sharma, and added that the same no-VIP culture guidelines and SOPs followed at AIIMS, New Delhi, and other medical colleges, should directly influence Goa’s SOPs.GARD’s former president Pratik Savant, speaking on behalf of all doctors at GMC, said that the protest was not political and not about one doctor.“It is about the whole medical fraternity being brought up by their teachers to stand up for self-respect and dignity. It’s not even about a doctor, but about the basic self-respect and dignity of a person,” he said, adding that doctors toiled during Covid-19 and during the recent Shirgao jatra stampede to save patients.Savant added that doctors spend years studying triage — deciding which patient to give preference to in an emergency situation — and that this should be left up to doctors. He said GARD’s demands were very simple and don’t require any external interference, adding that it would be a shame on doctors to let this incident go.
