Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) has no specific Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for male nurses working in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and emergency wards.
An administration official of PIMS told APP that every ward has SOPs but there weren’t any distinctions between conduct of male and female nurses.
The matter of SOPs assumed an added urgency after the father of a paralyzed 20 year old girl from Swat alleged that a male nurse, Krishan Kumar, sexually assaulted his daughter at night in the ICU last week.
According to a committee report, of Wafaqi Mohtasib Ombudsman’s Secretariat in 2015, about state of affairs in PIMS, an Associate Professor Dr Wajahat Aziz of Department of Rheumatology recommended that SOPs should be regularly audited by each department and amended accordingly.
But the recent incident indicates that the male nurse at that particular night was working without supervision of any doctor.
According to the report submitted by a committee of doctors to Minister for Capital Administration Dr Tariq Fazal Chaudhry, the entire staff except the male nurse was sleeping.
According to recommendations of Dr Wajahat to the Mohtasib committee, each department should be given autonomy so that they can formulate their own SOPs for their functioning.
These SOPs should address functioning of outpatient department, accident and emergency department, interdepartmental referrals and consultations. Various departments should, thereafter, be held responsible for their working and functioning.
The heads of department (HOD) should be able to request the necessary medic-surgical equipment for their proper functioning and the administration should be made responsible to provide such medic-surgical equipment on priority basis.
HODs should have limited finances at hand which can be dispersed for immediate needs of the department.
The heads of various departments including the administration should have combined meetings regularly where the SOPs of their departments could be audited and problems discussed so that urgent attention of the administration can be gained.
The administration should liaise with the concerned departments including the finance department on urgent basis to rectify shortcomings.