KOCHI: It has been almost 14 months since the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus in the state last year. And with the ferocious second wave of the pandemic hitting the state from last month, the situation has changed in many ways. While the number of Covid patients, hospital beds and Covid first- and second-line treatment centres has increased, what has remained more or less constant is the number of healthcare workers, especially nurses. This, at a time when the state’s health sector has already been stretched to its limits.
One way to deal with the shortage is by conducting the pending exams of final-year BSc nursing students.
“Exams in three more subjects are pending which had been postponed due to the lockdown. If these students clear their final exams and practicals, they can register as nurses and join hospitals,” said Dr Sona PS, state president, Trained Nurses Association of India.
There are more than 6,000 students both in private and government institutions across the state awaiting their final exams. “Final-year nursing students have already covered their academics on Covid care. They just need one-day training session to join the hospitals’ Covid wards,” said Dr Sona, who is also the assistant professor at the Government Nursing College in the capital district.
Dr Sona said Kerala has nearly five lakh registered nurses but only 1.5 lakh are working in the state. “If the salary of the nurses is increased and they are provided with higher risk allowance, many nurses will come forward to work in the state itself,” she added.
“The basic salary of a nurse working in a government hospital starts at Rs 27,800. Meanwhile, that of contract nurses in private hospitals stand at Rs 20,000 or even less many a time. The low pay forces several nurses to go overseas. Therefore, a salary hike is imperative,” Dr Sona said.Another point Dr Sona highlighted was that as frontline warriors, several healthcare workers had also tested positive while taking care of Covid patients. Hence, the government must increase the risk allowance of the nurses working in Covid wards.
“When one staffer tests positive, the whole team goes into self-quarantine leading to a shortage of staff. This overburden the others at work,” said a nurse working in a private hospital in Kozhikode. “At times, we have to do the work of two to three staffers in a shift,” she said.There is a huge shortage of trained ICU nurses in the hospitals in Kerala. A crash course for qualifying nurses to work in ICU wards will help curb the shortage to an extend, said Dr Tinku Joseph, Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences.
Further, Dr Tinku also suggested that the government should provide incentives to healthcare workers, especially to those who work in the Covid wards to keep their morale high. “The number of medical staff, from doctors to attendees, continues to be low in the hospitals when compared to the number of patients they receive these days,” said Dr Nazim M, working at Ernakulam General Hospital. “With the government speeding up the registration of foreign medical graduates, over 700 of them will be joining hospitals in the state for house surgency,” he added.