At Kashmir’s premier healthcare institute, Sher-e-Kashmir Institute Medical Sciences (SKIMS), around 44 percent of faculty positions are vacant, hitting the healthcare delivery badly.
In the past few years, these vacant faculty positions, whichhave grown in number, have been advertised many times, as per an officialdocument. However, the process to fill up the posts has lingered on resultingin a shortage of 43.85 percent faculty positions.
Out of 285 faculty positions, only 160 are in position while125 are vacant in different departments.
The institute was conceived as tertiary-care healthinstitute for J&K, meant to deliver state-of-art treatment facilities aswell as leading institution in terms of medical research. However, over the years,lack of up gradation of facilities and manpower have rendered a blow tospecialty services at the Institute, a senior doctor at SKIMS said.
Example this: SKIMS houses the only hematology division inKashmir, and was expected to provide leading role in delivery of care indisorders related to blood such as leukemia, myeloma, other blood cancers andbleeding disorders .
However, 9 of 12 faculty positions in various departments ofthe division are vacant. In the department of blood transfusion, none of thefour faculty positions have been filled after they fell vacant. In hematologylaboratory, none out of the available two positions is in position. Indepartments of clinical hematology and pediatric hematology, half of thefaculty positions are vacant, as per an official document.
It reveals that the scenario was pervasive across variousother departments, crucial for delivering efficient specialty patient services.
A liver transplant unit was set up at the Institute toprovide a much needed facility for hundreds of patients with terminal liverdiseases. However, data shows that the unit has not taken off and none of itsfive faculty positions have been filled.
Rheumatology is another department where dearth of facultyhas hit services. Being the only exclusive rheumatology department in Kashmir,it was expected to provide specialized services for hundreds of patients.However, all four of the created faculty positions in this department arevacant.
In department of clinical biochemistry, six of the sevenfaculty positions are vacant, rendering a jolt to a service required by allother departments.
In department of medical oncology, which houses the onlycomposite cancer center of Kashmir, five out of the eight faculty positions arevacant. In its allied nuclear medicine department, six out of the seven facultypositions are vacant.
Other departments that face gross shortage of facultyinclude emergency medicine, reproductive medicine, respiratory medicine,pediatric surgery, nephrology, neurology and radio-physics.
The data about the dearth of the faculty has been providedby the institute in response to an RTI application that was filed by activistMM Shuja. The response says that all vacant positions stand advertised.
A professor at one of the departments said the dearth offaculty had affected not only patient care but medical education at theInstitute as well.
“We have bare minimum manpower in terms of faculty in manydepartments,” he said adding that in many cases the advertisements were shownto the medical education regulatory body to prevent de-recognition.
“The Institute has often hid its failures behindadvertisements when MCI asks about the faculty shortage. However, it is a factthat we have not been able to redress the issue,” he said.
Director SKIMS Prof Omar Javaid Shah said that screening ofapplications received in response to advertisements was going on. “We arehoping to fill the vacancies soon,” he said.