NTF Formed By Supreme Court Gives Suggestions On Safety & Better Working Conditions Of Medical Professionals

The National Task Force (NTF) constituted by the Supreme Court in the wake of safety concerns of medical professionals after the RG Kar Hospital Doctor's Rape-Murder, has given exhaustive recommendations for enhancing better work conditions of the professionals and preventing sexual harassment at medical workplaces. 

The NTF is a 9-member committee headed by Surgeon Vice Admiral Arti Sarin AVSM, VSM, Director General Medical Services .

The NTF, in its recommendations also gave a slew of solutions relating to stricter security measures. These include the Short Term Measures (STM) that detail upon (a) Constitution of Security Committee in Healthcare Establishments; (b) Deployment of trained security personnel; (c) Coordination with local police; (d) augmentation of mobile networks for better coverage in low network areas;

(e) CCTV surveillance in healthcare establishments (HCE); (f) Security Control rooms in HCE; (g) Distress Call System; (h) Quick Response Team; (i) Incident reporting system; (j) Centralised helplines; (k) Transportation facility to doctors and staff at nightime; 

Bettering Work Conditions 

Specific Recommendations were made for improving the working conditions of medical professionals. 

(1) Need to follow the NMC guidelines regarding the duty hours of doctors and medical professionals; 

(2) Assuring the presence of senior doctors in Emergency Service Area in order to instill a sense of confidence in the patient's attendants in crisis and for better guidance to the juniors to diffuse any complexities; 

(3) Steps to strengthen the emergency facility with fully functional essential equipments and having a night shift safety protocol at every HCE for safe movement of the professionals; 

(4) Equitable distribution of work should be done among Junior Resident and Senior Resident Doctors 

Preventing Sexual Violence Against Medical Professionals 

(1) Constitution of Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) under POSH Act 2013 - which increased awareness of the POSH provisions, dissemination of the law in regional languages and proper training and rotation of ICC members; 

(2) Measures should be taken to prevent stigmatization of the complainants; 

(3) Introducing the Sexual Harassment electronic-Box (SHe-Box) - a single window online access portal for registration of sexual harassment complaint by working women; 

(4) reporting of the violence, assaults, crimes be done to the area police station within one hour by the Medical Institute and FIR be registered by the head of institute (HOI)/designated official/authorised official including their link officer within 6 hours of the reported crime. 

(5) The State police should use CCTNS (Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & System)/ICJS (Inter-operable Criminal Justice System) to track the progress of investigation. The States/UTs should also set up appropriate monitoring mechanism at District/State level for tracking progress and ensuring other follow-up action including speedy prosecution of the case.

(6) Leveraging Emergency Response Support System 112(ERSS-112) - the national emergency number 112 launched  for addressing distress calls from citizens over 10 different mediums (voice call, SMS, SOS, email, chatbot etc) on the common platform set up in 'Public Safety Answering Point' of each state or UT.

The NTF has also opined against the need for a central law to protect healthcare professionals. According to the NTF, the provisions of the existing penal laws are sufficient to deal with crimes against medical professionals.

The Committee also recommended certain long term 'aspirational' measures such as : 

a) State Governments/ UT Administration to work towards adherence of Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) and National Quality Assurance Standards (NOAS) in Sub-Centres and Primary Health Centres/ Ayushman Arogya Mandirs (AAMs)/ Health & Wellness Centres (HWCs); Community Health Centres (CHCs); Sub- Divisional Hospitals (SDHs) and District Hospitals (DHs). NQAS for Medical Colleges/ tertiary care facilities are under formulation and may be expedited.

b) NTF recommends that development of a Code System for emergencies related to violence in the premises of HCEs may be examined. The objective of such Code System would be identifying the type of situation and help in quick response from medical professionals and security team in case of emergency situation.

c) Technology can be leveraged, wherever feasible. Electronic ID/ facial recognition/ RFID/other electronic attendance systems are available. However, it is reiterated that their use has to be aligned to terms of size, scale and sophistication of the HCEs and should not hinder patient care.

d) Option such as dashboard for displaying filled and vacant beds and other hospital statistics can be examined to reflect real time data and can help in establishing an effective referral system among HCES.

e) Given the space constraints, location constraints, each HCE should endeavor for development of adequate bed capacity of duty rooms for resident doctors, doctors, nurses and other paramedical staff posted for night duty in the premises.