Bill on Protection of Resident doctors
The Central Government has constituted a Committee to examine various aspects of a uniform legislative framework to address issues of assault on clinical establishments and doctors on duty.
As per Constitutional provisions, ‘Health’ is a State subject. It is the primary responsibility of the respective State / Union Territory (UT) Government to prescribe norms for fixing working hours for the doctors and other medical practitioners working in their hospitals. As such, no information in this regard is centrally maintained.
As far as three Central Government hospitals namely Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Safdarjung Hospital, Lady Harding Medical College & Associated Hospitals and All India Medical Institute of Sciences, New Delhi are concerned, the working hours for doctors and other medical practitioner normally do not exceed 40 hours per week. However, the duty timing and working hours of doctors and medical practitioners are guided by exigencies of the work and factors, such as, emergency duty, patient load, etc.
Further, adequate residents/doctors are available in these Central government hospitals to provide due care to the patient. As and when there is increase in work load necessitating increase in number of doctors, new posts are created to ensure that required manpower is available to deliver desired level of clinical care.
