HYDERABAD: There is a severe dearth of nurses at Osmania General Hospital even as the nursing colleges continue to produce thousands of nurses each year. The OGH has a deficit of over 700 nurses. The situation continues to remain grim as hospital struggle with a serious staff crunch.
One staff nurse has to attend anywhere between 40 to 70 patients and some times more. Let’s say there are 70 patients and it takes at least three minutes to check the temperature of a patient. For 70 patients, it takes more than three-and-a-half-hours just to just check temperatures.
A senior staff nurse said apart from attending to patients they have to file indents on number of medicines, blankets, and other resources required. They said that at times three to four wards are allotted to one nurse. The nurses complained that stress and strain in the job is taking a toll on their health.
With the ideal nurse-patient ratio being 1:6, patient care is bound to get affected due to this skewed ratio.
Narrating an incident at the hospital, the nurses said at one point, one nurse has to attend patients in three male medical wards.
“She was administering injection to a patient in Male Medical (MM) Ward-II and an attender rushed to her urging that another patient needs immediate help. She was in middle of treatment and could not leave. The attender rushed to her again to inform that the patient had collapsed. The nurse had to leave the treatment mid-way, take the patient to Intensive Medical Care (IMC). If there were enough nurses, the patient would not have collapsed, “ said a staff nurse on condition of anonymity.
When Express visited Male Medical Wards in the hospital on Saturday afternoon, there were complaints galore by the patients.
Attenders of patients said that though the nurses attend the patients, they are not available when there is an emergency or a medical help is required.