Good morning. Two of today’s stories are about the records doctors keep, and who ends up reading them. The third is for anyone with a Paediatrics seat in play before Round 2. And if a story here touches your hospital or your rank, reply and tell me :)
— DR. ADITYA SETH, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
01 · THE LEAD
MEDICOLEGAL
A file of dated records nobody challenged carried nine staff through five years in court
The patient was brought to a private hospital in Gurugram in May 2021, at the peak of the second wave, with a neurological problem and a urinary infection. He tested Covid positive, and with no ICU bed free he went to a general ward converted into a Covid ward. The team sent IL-6 four times and gave six doses of remdesivir, and about two weeks in he had a cardiac arrest and died. His family said the doctors had been too busy with younger patients to see him regularly.
The family never pointed to a single step that broke from standard practice, and the commission said the hospital’s record “inspires full confidence”. It asked for no proof that beds had run out, treating the second-wave shortage as common knowledge.
WHY IT MATTERS
A complaint can name anyone connected to the admission, and this one listed a nurse and two hospital managers alongside the doctors.
In an ordinary month there is no national shortage to lean on, so the ICU question would turn on your note: why the patient was not escalated, and what the family was told.
With no expert on either side, nobody examined the file, and the order never mentions his IL-6 results or even the date he died.
02 · POLICY
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Policy
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Faculty vacations at three Delhi colleges are under review, and RML wants the data in two days
The health ministry committee reviewing leave for teaching doctors in the Central Health Service has sent VMMC and Safdarjung, ABVIMS and RML, and Lady Hardinge the same form. It wants the dates vacations were really taken, how many faculty may be away at once, who covers the wards, and two years of OPD, ICU and surgery figures. Nothing has been cut. It also asks what academic leave has produced, and whether anyone checks.
What sources allege about stacked leave, and why faculty keep pointing at AIIMS.
03x · EXAMS AND ADMISSIONS
Only 6 of the top 500 ranks took Paediatrics this year, down from 12
The seats still filled, further down the list: the last government seat in the Open category went to rank 9,574 in Round 1, just 17 ranks short of where it finally closed in 2025 after Round 2. That year nearly half of Paediatrics’ Round 1 allottees let their seat go, and Round 2 filled 1,344 seats afresh. Round 1 joining closes on 2 November, and Round 2 runs from 6 to 14 November.
Where each category could close if Round 2 moves the way it did last year.
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