Ex-Pims employees offer role in hospital’s reform process

Retired staff members of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) have penned a letter to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, extending their capability and involvement in the hospital's reform process. The letter, signed by the Pims Retired Employees Welfare Association, highlights the ex-employees' acknowledgment of the Prime Minister's worries following a recent tragic incident at the hospital, where 14 newborn babies lost their lives.

The association commends the government's direction to implement extensive reforms aimed at tackling institutional shortcomings, refining governance, ensuring fairness, and updating the system of this crucial national institution.

The letter underscores the significance of their role, stating, "We are not outsiders looking at Pims from a distance. We are the people who came with the commissioning team of Pims, helped establish its foundations, developed its systems and served the institution through its formative and subsequent decades." They further elaborate on the changes they witnessed over the years, including the evolving social environment, growing patient load, administrative challenges, resource constraints, external pressures, and other factors that have gradually impacted the efficiency and institutional culture of the hospital.

The association, which includes senior-most former administrators, executive directors, hospital administrators, and department heads, believes their decades of institutional knowledge and practical experience can substantially contribute to the reform process.

The letter emphasizes their intention to assist the proposed reform committee by identifying institutional and administrative weaknesses, understanding the root causes of these weaknesses, proposing practical and workable solutions, creating mechanisms for implementing these solutions, strengthening merit, transparency, accountability, and justice, and implementing reforms necessary to align Pims with modern standards of hospital administration and patient care.

Crucially, they state that they offer their experience without any expectation of a personal position, financial gain, appointment, or other privilege. Their sole objective is to restore Pims to its original state of excellence, for which generations of its doctors, nurses, administrators, technicians, and other employees worked diligently.