REVIEWING GMC AFTER A YEAR: Some things change, some things don’t change. Like Casualty! Desperately in need of larger premises, refurbishing and better management…

By Tara Narayan

TARA NARAYAN reviews a recent visit to Goa’s premier public hospital, the Goa Medical College & Hospital…

FIRST the good news! Much has changed for the better at Goa’s premier distinguished public hospital – the historic Goa Medical College & Hospital with stories to tell like no other hospital perhaps. The old image of gloomy, dingy, dark corridors, degraded pocket gardens here and there…that era is over. Now we have a vast modern complex of old and new, some good, some not so good.
But at the hospital gates nothing has changed since I was there with a patient last year! At GMC gates nothing has changed for the better. The slope here continues to be treacherous and requiring patient skill in negotiating broken patches, be very careful especially if you’re on a two-wheeler. There is ample scope for tripping and going for a toss even while walking up or down.
Nearby, the traffic movement in and out at the circle is a killer, because one may not see traffic coming around the corner from under the subway, and this place is more crowded because of the Sulabh Sauchalya here bang in the centre of the pocket garden. The temple beckons like a tranquil place on most days.
There’s the same old commerce just near the gates to hamper smooth in and out — the pilot motor-bike stand so close by, the fresh sabzi vendors with their piles of veggies, the snack vendors with their variety of snacks and the new market further up which offers fruit and much more a patient and his family in attendance may need in emergency situations. Practical and desirable services but garbage dumps pile up here and there beneath a lovely peepal tree breaking into new leaf.
Inside the hospital grounds the two-wheeler and four-wheeler parking complex is worse without any disciplined parking despite the guard on duty and his whistle! At night it is a bit of a nightmare to park one’s two-wheeler or to extricate it. But enter Casualty building and by 6am housekeeping staff is already sweeping and mopping and the familiar eerie poster message follows you around telling you “You are being watched under CCTV camera!” It is quite threatening.
The new age stainless steel benches are icy cold when the central air-conditioning is turned a few notches higher than what is considered ideal by someone; patients’ relatives (with the exception of one in the ward with the patient) wrap themselves up in heavy chaddar and sleep the night away outside at the foyers of the wards. Comfortably on the floor or uncomfortably on the cold stainless steel benches. It’s always a long night while keeping company with a patient in one of the wards.
Casualty is always a crowded area with patients arriving around the clock and with the X-ray and CT-scan rooms opposite, the toilet block quite far away. The old Covid rooms have turned into a spanking new Trauma ward of 16 beds in preparation for the National Games all set to go in Goa. The Trauma ward is always full for most cases coming in are of road accidents. Most chronic patients present at the respective OPDs to be checked and treated by respective heads of departments and consultant doctors, the OPDs too are always crowded and it’s always sad see sick seniors biding their time in queues to see the consultant on duty.
SERIOUSLY, if the burden of senior citizens and what ails them could be taken away to a brand new hospital exclusively for senior citizens, it would be a blessing for the Goa Medical College & Hospital! Never mind that it does have the only Geriatric ward in Goa with HOD Dr Edwin Gomes in charge.
Funny or not funny, this is the only ward where a patient is screened in totality from head to toe – otherwise it’s generally a story of various doctors reviewing a patient for what ails him/her alone on recommendation – the neuro folk will come and tap you all over to tell you about the state of your nerves and muscles; the ortho folk will tell you about your collapsing “crushed spine”; the trauma surgeons prescribing for post- brain tumor surgery patients…and of course no one doctor takes a look at your feet to tell you better get your circulation problems dealt with! We start dying as we age from the feet upwards, you must know that.
Sodexo meals are still around and the nutritionist will call on patients who like they are starving themselves to ask them if they’re not eating the hospital standard thali meal, what would they like – poha, oatmeal, haldi-dudh last thing at night! Various caretakers market their company or group of caretakers if the patient has no family member in attendance! The going price is Rs1,800 for 24 hours care, 12 hour shifts, I notice the male nurses on hire are actually very fit and able to lift and take care of their male patients while the ward boy assistants may be reluctant or they disappear when you need them!

Needless to say the private caretakers business is booming most handsomely in Goa, never mind that many may be just housewives moonlighting for good money or half-baked “nurses” long since retired. Some of the caretakers are positively scary. But thanks to recently appointed administrator Dr Rajesh Patil (a surgeon himself) the GMC ward helpers are no longer called “servants,” a most antediluvian word of imperial Portuguese and British times.
A visit to the pharmacies where the Sodexo canteen is revealed that Wellness Chemists are the most expensive! A plastic urinary pot which would otherwise cost Rs110 is priced at Rs150 or more. Mercifully, the Sodexo meals continue to be decent and this is a relief, I’ve never minded catching a bite here although there’s standing space only most meal times. At the other canteen outlets there’s a lot of junk food to satisfy junk-loving palates of patients and their relatives! Only the well-to-do are health-conscious in India today, not the poorer working classes.
Visits to the GMC always leave me happy and a little unhappy. So much has improved yet so much remains to be re-imagined and reviewed with common sense with the aam aadmi in mind, who only seek simple decent facilities and basic comforts. Not to forget someone to hold their hand when things go wrong, so wrong with their loved ones or them.

LIFE IS ON AT THE GMC, Goa’s premier public hospital, a few of my favourite clicks without comments…

GMC needs a state-of-the-art Casualty!

An open letter to Health Minister Vishwajit Rane. Dear Vishwajit bab, when did you last take a good walk around Casualty at Goa’s premier public hospital, the Goa Medical College & Hospital? More than 200 patients turn up here for medical treatment every day – and yet the place is cramped around the clock (except late night) with patients and doctors jostling for space.
Patients and GMC staffers make it through the day here gallantly as if life is a daily survival game for them to stay sane at Casualty. On Tuesday, October 10, 2023 an observer saw patients lying on cold metal stretchers while in line for x-rays and CT scans, awaiting respective doctors from respective medical departments to turn up to do needful check-ups of the patients. Before someone takes the decision of admitting patients, perhaps depending on how close to death they are! I’m sure many patients give up the ghost in Casualty itself.
You will say this is all routine in a Casualty and this is appreciated. Life is nasty, brutal and short for the many at the bottom of the ladder of the good life. Patients don’t have anything to cover them on the stretchers …they moan, cry, shout in agony, throw up or worse still look desperately around seeking a pee. But where is the bathroom nearby which they may or may not be able to rush too?
What do you know, after a lot of cajoling a patient was handed a half-cut Bisleri water bottle to urinate in…we understand the re-cycling of plastic ware, but have you ever tried peeing into a jaggered-edged plastic Bisleri water bottle and that too surreptiously in a room full of people? With everyone around looking on, most turning their gaze away politely?
And after the job is over where do you put the half-filled with urine bottles, without tripping per chance? Private parts are delicate areas and if one of the badly-cut Bisleri bottles nicks…imagine how haywire the scene will get.
Is there a shortage of proper portable urine pots or cans as they are called for male and female patients? Rusty water drips from the open panels overhead and the floor is wet and it has been like this for the last three years we understand. The cold drops fall on patients and their medical papers as they await their turn to be attended to …hell’s bells, a patient may wait up to seven hours or the entire day at Casualty before a decision is taken to which ward to accommodate him for treatment.
Doesn’t Health Minister Vishwajit Rane pride himself on state-of-the-art blocks for every medical speciality at the GMC? Why not Casualty where the need is the greatest?