Yvonne Webb

Con­sul­tant anaes­thetists at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (SFGH) have giv­en the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) up to to­day to make im­prove­ments to the de­part­ment or have all elec­tive surg­eries can­celled, in­def­i­nite­ly, from Mon­day. Sources told the Guardian there is a woe­ful­ly in­ad­e­quate num­ber of con­sul­tant anaes­thetists to man­age the nine op­er­at­ing the­atres, six-bed In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) and four-bed High De­pen­den­cy Unit at the SFGH.

There are two con­sul­tant anaes­thetists cur­rent­ly work­ing at the de­part­ment, Dr Wendy Di­az and Dr Shas­tri Hard­eo. They work both day and night and ro­tate on week­ends, the Guardian was told. The two met with SWRHA CEO Anil Go­sine and the Ex­ec­u­tive Med­ical Di­rec­tor, Dr She­vanand Gopeesingh, last Mon­day, to in­form them that they were "burnt out and stressed out and could not con­tin­ue this way."

Di­az and Hard­eo, re­port­ed­ly gave Go­sine and Gopeesingh an ul­ti­ma­tum-to ei­ther hire new con­sul­tant anaes­thetists or pro­mote oth­ers in the De­part­ment of Anaes­thet­ics and In­ten­sive Care with­in sev­en days-which ends to­day Sun­day. Fail­ing this, from Mon­day, March 5, all elec­tive surg­eries at the SFGH will be can­celled. A ros­ter has al­ready been post­ed for next week, in­di­cat­ing that on­ly emer­gency surg­eries would be done.

Anil Go­sine, CEO of the SWRHA, con­firmed that the de­part­ment is not up to its full com­ple­ment of anaes­thetists, but de­clined to re­veal the num­bers re­quired for prop­er man­age­ment. He al­so in­di­cat­ed that an­oth­er con­sul­tant anaes­thetist is on sick leave, hav­ing con­tract­ed chick­en pox. Go­sine said while a few elec­tive surg­eries may be cur­tailed, he could not say that all will be can­celled.

"We are look­ing at it (short­age) and mak­ing moves to en­sure that (full can­cel­la­tion) does not hap­pen. We are putting rec­om­men­da­tions in place to have more anaes­thetists at the SFGH," Go­sine ex­plained. Con­sul­tant anaes­thetist Dr Anand Cha­toor­goon, for­mer act­ing Med­ical Di­rec­tor of the SFGH, said this sit­u­a­tion has pushed the hos­pi­tal 40 years back­wards when there were on­ly two anaes­thet­ic con­sul­tants at the SFGH man­ag­ing four func­tion­ing op­er­at­ing the­atres and a three-bed ICU.

At present there are sev­en func­tion­al op­er­at­ing the­atres at the SFGH in which an av­er­age of five pa­tients per day re­ceive surg­eries, Cha­toor­goon said. "The ap­palling fail­ure of the SWRHA to act de­ci­sive­ly and ap­pro­pri­ate­ly will re­sult in a post­pone­ment of all these pa­tients re­quir­ing surg­eries in al­most all of the sur­gi­cal spe­cial­i­ties.