lucknow achieving high standard of doctorpatient relationship seems a distant dream in up given the acute shortage of doctors in two premier institutions kgmu and sgpgi in kgmu over 20 of the sanctioned posts are vacant the surgical oncology department for example has only person working against four sanctioned posts while only two persons are working against five official positions in the cardio thoracic and vascular diseases department then there are departments where number of posts need to be increased urgently in neurosurgery department doctors are working against four sanctioned positions but the strength is not enough to meet the large number of head injury cases the medicine department too needs more people to cope up with huge out and in patient burden in sgpgi 40 of the sanctioned posts are vacant clinical departments such as nephrology gastroenterology gastro surgery neurology neurosurgery and cardiology are the worst affected theres shortage in many of our new departments like plastic surgery pediatric surgery pulmonary medicine maternal and reproductive health said sgpgi director prof rk sharma a high population adds to the crisis as per government data 674 crore patients were examined in opds of stateowned hospitals in 201213 an increase of 35 since 200708 likewise indoor admissions have recorded a fivefold increase in the last five years while 114 lakh persons were admitted to various government hospitals in 200708 the number stood at 51 lakh in 201213 acknowledging the urgent need to add the work force in kgmu prof abbas mahdi said we are several decades behind the schedule of needs to cater to a huge population of 28 crore there are not 50 medical colleges in the state what he pointed out appears true the addition of new medical colleges is a recent phenomenon with mulayam government sending proposals for it in 2005 the last medical centre to come up in state was sgpgi which became functional in late 1980s hiring more doctors is an obvious solution but that appears distant since new medicos are unwilling to join prof rk sharma says a lot more needs to be done attracting talent alone will not help steps need to be taken to retain them this can be done through increasing nonmonetary benefits such as providing better avenues of research and providing foreign exposure he said in the government sector the problem of shortage deepens because of irrational use of resources this means that many specialist doctors are not doing the job they are trained in instead many of them are simply scanning files and letting their skills rust in making futile proposals the health and family welfare directorates are full of examples that prove wastage of skills however in some cases the administrative post is a matter of choice while in other it has been imposed president of up provincial medical services association dr ashok yadav says a specialist should definitely be doing clinical work but how can someone be denied a higher position only because theres a scarcity