Patient’s kin rupture doctor’s eardrum in Jamnagar hospital

RAJKOT: Resident doctors at Jamnagar’s GG Hospital were up in arms after the eardrum of one of their colleagues got ruptured following thrashing by a relative of a patient on Tuesday night.
The incident led to a protest by the resident doctors who sat on dharna on the hospital campus on Tuesday night. The doctors also submitted a memorandum to the hospital authorities.
A criminal complaint was filed with the B Division police station against a relative of patient Rana Chetariya by second year resident doctor Renjit Nair, a native of Ernakulam in Kerala. Nair has been working at the G G Hospital since 2020.
According to the police complaint, Nair was on duty in one of the wards of the hospital on Tuesday night. Chetariya, a native of Kalyanpur taluka in Devbhumi Dwarka was a patient admitted to that ward.
One of Chetariya’s relatives, a man in his late 30s, was sleeping in the bed adjacent to him. Nair introduced himself as the doctor in-charge of the ward and asked Chetariya’s relative to vacate the bed for another patient who was being transferred to the ward. The patient being brought to the ward was in need of an emergency oxygen supply.
But, the person sleeping on the bed got agitated and started arguing with the doctor asking him ‘how dare he tell him to vacate the bed’. Before Nair realised, the man started thrashing him. He also slapped Nair a couple of times on the face, CCTV footage of the incident showed.
Nair was rescued by the other resident doctors and patients. However, the attacker fled from the hospital. As Nair felt immense pain and loss of hearing in the left ear, he got himself examined by ENT specialist. It was found that Nair’s left eardrum had ruptured due to the impact of the slap.
Dr Gaurang Khadiya, a leader of resident doctors in Jamangar said, “We registered strong protest by submitting a memorandum to the hospital authority.”