WHO’S MINDING THE STORE?

Many persons would have been concerned at the number of senior doctors attached to the San Fernando General Hospital, who turned up on Tuesday at the San Fernando First Magistrates Court for the start of the preliminary inquiry into charges of murder laid against vascular surgeon, Professor Vijay Naraynsingh and two other persons, Mrs Seeromanie Maharaj-Naraynsingh, Professor Naraynsingh’s wife, and Elton Ramasir, a businessman. Admittedly, an example has long since been set by several of the country’s Police Constables, many of whom turn up conspicuously in uniform whenever a fellow police officer is charged in court.

With apologies to the late senior calypsonian, Cypher: “If the priest could play, who is me? Ah livin’ at Lavantee.” While there should be nothing unusual about persons, whether policemen or doctors, providing moral support to a relative, friend or colleague, who has been charged with an alleged offence, it would nonetheless have been a remarkable coincidence if all of the senior doctors who took seats in the area reserved for the general public were all off duty at the same time. Suppose some, even a few, had been originally rostered for duty, would not their right places have been at the relevant hospital wards or, if not, then at appointed hospital offices or other designated areas at the hospital, or whatever the procedure required? And, if some of the doctors had indeed been rostered what sort of signals would their absence have sent to junior doctors, interns, nurses, wardsmaids, cleaners, kitchen staff and even patients?

What would have been the response of these doctors had they gone to the dining room at mealtime only to discover that the kitchen had been short staffed because some of the workers had gone to listen to proceedings of a preliminary inquiry of a matter involving a co-worker and that the meal would be late? Or tired out after a particularly difficult case they had sought to relax only to find that the lounges made available to them were not as they would have wished because the staff had gone off to provide moral support to a fellow worker with a court matter? In turn, because of the crucial nature of their jobs the question has to be asked, what would have happened should an emergency have arisen which required their immediate presence? Clearly, their ability to be on the wards and at the beds of patients requiring urgent attention or even in the operating theatre would have been affected by their having to rush out of the court, through the Harris Promenade and onto the hospital grounds and the hospital itself.

Additionally, what would have happened had some of the doctors been on call and their switched off cellular phones had failed to vibrate? We take this line inasmuch as risking their cell phones ringing in court would have drawn a great deal more than today’s Editorial. Meanwhile, even as we pose these questions as concerned citizens and on behalf of the hospital’s patient public we wish to emphasise that we do not do so to throw any doubt whatever with respect to the devotion to duty of the relevant doctors. We do so out of concern for their several patients for whose welfare they took an oath, in which they stated their obligations to them and the medical profession. Doctors are not your average trade unionists or for that matter all too many of the country’s Police Constables, who very often will swarm a court room when a colleague has been charged for an alleged offence, whether they are on duty or not. The line, if indeed this is necessary, has to be drawn somewhere.