MBBS Medicos colour-code roads to departments at Kolkata Medical College

Kolkata: For the vital convenience of the patients and their concerned relatives, who find the paths leading to various departments of the mega medical institute, tricky; the undergraduate MBBS students of Kolkata Medical College and Hospital have come up with an innovative idea of colour-coding the roads at the medical premises.

For the extraordinary feat, the MBBS students started working on the project on 1^st November, once the OPD rush left. Paths to various departments of the 1800-bedded hospital including blood bank, the USG facility, the main OPD building, the chest, orthopaedic and ENT OPD, the haematology clinic, cardiology department etc have been colour-coded. The office of the Medical Superintendent, who is also the Vice-Principal, has been marked in white as relatives of patients need to approach him regularly with various grievances.

Four colours, Red, Green, Yellow and White have been used to draw arrows and stripes leading to different departments of the medical institution. The arrows with the names of the departments written in between will guide the patients and their family members to the concerned department they wanted to go in the first place.

According to the MBBS students, there are specific instructions on the big hoarding. For instance, follow the green line to go to the outdoor building, Yellow line emergency to go to the night house, White colour going to the emergency room and Red line for the Central Laboratory, Pathology, Microbiology and Biochemistry departments.

"There are six gates to the hospital. The colour-coding will start from each of these gates, with the guiding arrows in different colours ending at relevant departments. We believe this will be of help to patients," said another MBBS final-year student and a member of the Medical College Democratic Students' Association, while talking to TOI about the innovative scheme.

It is not possible for the MBBS students to collect the money for the project, all by themselves, as it takes a lot of funding for the boards, hoardings as well as certain colours for the roads, for that reason an MBBS student informed the Indian Express that the medicos have submitted a letter to the college administration urging it to carry forward the initiative.

Hopefully, this scheme will prove to be a massive help for the medical institute’s staff, who are asked several questions here and then by the concerned patients and family members as to where is this department, or where will we get these reports etc. with this initiative in practice, it will be easy to find out different departments in the wide area of the medical college and hospital.

Highlighting the very issue, a third-year MBBS student from the medical college told TOI, "We often come across patients or their relatives wandering around, searching for departments they need to go. So we came up with the idea and help them by using colour codes. It will guide them to the right places."