JJ hosp’s surgery dept patients inconvenienced by renovation

Mumbai: There were complaints of overcrowding at the state-run JJ Hospital's Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) in recent months, said doctors.
Sources mentioned that the renovated SICU, inaugurated last year by medical education minister Hassan Mushrif, is being used not only for patients operated on by doctors from the surgery department but also from other departments.This is due to the ongoing renovation work at the hospital.
Renovation at six departments, including Cardiology, Paediatric Surgery, and Neurosurgery, is nearing completion, but work in several others remains.
These six wards are expected to be inaugurated this month. In the meantime, the hospital has been using the SICU to accommodate patients from other departments.
A senior doctor stated that the hospital has two dedicated units for patients from the surgery department: an ICU and a recovery room. "If those two wards are full, then patients are placed on floor beds, thereby increasing their risk of infection," the doctor added. The SICU has a capacity of 17 beds.
"The unit was first provided to the Neurosurgery Department because of renovation works there, and now there are discussions about converting it into a general critical care unit because of the ongoing renovations in that unit. The hospital management could have taken up the renovation works one by one instead of all at once," said the doctor.
However, a hospital official countered, "It's not as if we've kept the SICU closed. It's in use and benefiting patients. Moreover, the surgery department functioned without a SICU for decades and can continue to do so as it did before this unit was established."
Dr Pallavi Saple, the Dean of the JJ Group of Hospitals, was unavailable for comment.