Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The separation of the emergency medicine section from a trauma centre, done about eight months ago to reduce patients’ load on doctors, is leading to delays in critical care and causing operational inefficiencies at AIIMS in Bhopal.
“Patients themselves decide where to go – trauma centre or emergency medicine unit - before coming to AIIMS. Now, two separate units are working.
Earlier, they used to come and we doctors used to decide where they have to go for treatment. That confused,” AIIMS medical superintendent Dr Vikash Gupta said.
Trauma patient requires swift, concurrent interventions to check bleeding etc. If the emergency medicine section and trauma centre are separated, access to timely facilities like CT scan gets delayed, which increases risk of early mortality.
Dr Amit Prayadarshi, who left AIIMS (trauma centre) a month ago, said, “The emergency medicine unit was separated nearly eight months ago in AIIMS to decrease patients’ load from doctors.
But separating the fields increases the risk where a severely injured patient is initially misclassified and sent to a standard emergency bed instead of an active trauma unit. Initially, the objective was different, but now the situation is worse.”
