HYDERABAD: Staff nurses at the Government General and Chest Hospital in Erragadda are facing severe inconvenience due to lack of washrooms in all the wards of the hospital.
Whenever they have to relieve themselves, the staff nurses (around 56) have to walk for 20 to 30 minutes to reach a bathroom faraway from the female and male medical wards.
To give an elaborate picture of why the nurses have to walk for so long, consider this: the hospital is spread across a sprawling green campus. Two male medical wards and a female ward are separated by huge open spaces to facilitate the free flow of air. The wards are located in deep pockets of the campus and there are no washrooms for nurses. They walk all the way to another female ward or the one at another block.
Sources in the hospital said that this becomes more problematic during monsoons. “Since the hospital is filled with trees and grass, there are snakes and other reptiles. When it rains in the night and we have to go to bathroom, what if they come in our way? If a nurse is suffering from diarrhoea, what is she supposed to do?,” sources questioned.
Explaining that the problem is two-fold, they said that there is shortage of nurses and one nurse is allotted 60 to 80 patients.
This means that we have to be in a ward at every minute of our duty. It takes 20 to 30 minutes for us to go to bathroom and return to the male or female wards. If a patient slips into emergency situation and something goes wrong, we will be blamed for ‘neglecting’ our duty,” a staff nurse said.
The only ray of hope for them is one bathroom which is being constructed at Male Medical Ward-I. However, they do not know when the works would be completed.
Only one of four medical ventilator functional at RICU
Hyderabad: The Government General and Chest hospital at Erragadda specialises in treating lung-related ailments, and ironically, as it may appear, the Respiratory Intensive Care Unit (RICU) here has only one out of four medical ventilators functional at the moment. Patients from across the State suffering from breathing problems are admitted at the RICU.
Those from economically backward sections in adverse stages of Tuberculosis, Aasthma and other respiratory diseases get treatment at the government hospital. While the hospital earlier had four medical ventilators, only one is functional as of now. Doctors at the hospital said that those in need of ventilator support are directed to Gandhi Hospital in Secunderabad.
“If the ventilators are available at RICU, more number of patients could be treatment at the hospital,” sources said. It is learnt that a new RICU is being built in the hospital. While the situation is expected to improve thereafter, it would take at least three months for the new unit to be operational as tenders are yet to be floated. When contacted to know the situation, superintendent of the hospital, Dr A Sai Kumar did not respond to phone calls.