Five resident doctors were placed under suspension by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) over the death of a pregnant nurse due to their alleged negligence. The action was taken following a protest by the Nurses Union on Sunday. The decision was denounced by the Resident Doctors Association (RDA), which demanded that it be rolled back or they would go on a strike.
In a letter to the AIIMS Director, RDA officials said the five doctors, who were on the duty in the operation theatre, had decided to perform a cesarean surgery on the nurse, Rajbir Kaur, as there were some complications.
The nurse suffered a cardiac arrest during the surgery, leading to more complications. But without taking this into consideration, the administration put them under suspension, a senior RDA official said. “The RDA strongly condemns this action and urges the administration to withdraw the suspension order immediately, failing which the resident doctors will be forced to withdraw all patient care with immediate effect," the letter said.
Earlier in the day, the members of AIIMS nursing union staged a protest over the nurse's death. The union threatened to go on strike if the doctors, who treated the woman, were not terminated from service.
According to Sukhlal Jat, a member of the nursing union, Kaur was admitted to the hospital for a normal delivery on January 16. During treatment, she lost her baby and was put on life support. She died last night.
“Ever since her baby died, the nursing union had been protesting against the administration for not taking note of the issue and punishing the errant doctors," said the nursing union representative. Police said the post-mortem will be conducted to ascertain the cause of death.
“We lost one of our colleagues due to the negligence of the doctors. We want the doctors who were involved in the negligence towards her to be terminated. We can discuss about our other demands with the AIIMS administration but we want the termination of doctors," said Jat.
Following the furore over the incident and threats by the nursing staff to go on strike, the premier medical institute has constituted an 8-member committee headed by the AIIMS medical superintendent to probe the matter.