Thiruvananthapuram: Three employees of the Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram have been suspended on Monday after an internal enquiry had prima facie found that their negligence had trapped a patient in a lift for nearly two days.
The action followed state Health Minister Veena George's instruction to the directorate to investigate into the incident. The suspended staff are: lift operators Murugan and Adarsh J S, and the officer in charge of their supervision, duty sergeant Rajeesh.
The punitive action has been taken on the basis of an investigation carried out by a three-member team comprising the Medical Education Department joint director, the Medical College principal and the superintendent. The staff found guilty in the preliminary probe will be kept suspended while the principal has been asked to conduct a through probe into the circumstances that led to a patient getting trapped inside the lift.
It was on July 13, Saturday, Ulloor native and CPI local secretary Raveendran Nair (59) reached the ortho OP of the Medical College with severe back pain. He was accompanied by his wife who worked in the paying counter of the medical college. The incident happened when Raveendran got into the lift after taking an X-ray as advised by the doctor. The lift went up and then, suddenly, it dropped and went dead. It was noon by then.
His mobile was violently thrown from his hand in the sudden fall of the lift. Though slightly damaged, he could still make frantic calls to the number displayed near the number panel on the lift. It was the dim light from his damaged mobile that allowed him to see the SOS numbers. When there was no help, and drowned in darkness, a desperate Raveendran kept banging the elevator doors with all his might. No one seemed to have heard.
The wife, who had resumed duty after taking her husband to the X-ray room, was under the impression that her husband would have gone home after meeting the doctor with the X-ray. The family panicked when Raveendran did not return home that night. Neither close relatives nor friends had come into contact with him on Saturday.
The wife then registered a complaint with the Medical College police. The police, too, could not trace Raveendran. However, on Monday morning, after spending one-and-a-half days in a dark elevator, Raveendran was rescued by another lift operator who came for the morning shift on Monday. The electrical wing of the Medical College, which carries out the maintenance of the lifts, told the enquiry panel that it had not received any information about a faulty lift.
As per the existing standard operating procedures (SOP) followed in the hospital, every day at closing time lift operators are supposed to bring down the lift, open and examine it and then lock it. This was clearly not done on Saturday.
Security officers and lift operators are also supposed to check the lights and lifts on all the floors after OP (out-patient) time. And if an elevator is not functioning, they are supposed to place an 'Out of Service' board near the entrance.
Raveendran had told the enquiry committee that no such board was found near the entrance of the lift that he had entered. It was Adarsh who was on duty on July 13. His shift was from 9 am to 3 pm Raveendran was trapped by around 12 pm. No one heard the alarms he had triggered while inside the lift either.
