TIRUCHY: The district’s largest government super speciality hospital, Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Government Hospital (MGMGH), is functioning with just a little over one-tenth of the required staff nurse strength, documents pertaining to the healthcare institution’s human resources management show.
This is in stark contrast to the medical regulations at large, which advise a nurse-patient ratio of up to 1:1 in critical care wards. The 1,600-bed capacity hospital currently has 187 nurses as against a vacancy for 1,358 more, documents accessed by TNIE point out.
The shortage is causing a “huge burden” to the hospital as nurses are needed for all the current three shifts, a senior medical official told this daily on condition of anonymity. This, when the hospital sees a daily footfall of 1,000, with patients coming even from the neighbouring districts of Pudukkottai and Perambalur owing to the facilities offered, the official pointed out.
While expressing satisfaction with the hospital’s doctor strength of 350, the official remarked, “Being one of the oldest GHs in Tamil Nadu, our capacities have expanded over the years but the sanctioned posts have not." Stating the nurse shortage as a problem peculiar to a good number of old government hospitals, the official explained,
“In old GHs the sanctioned strength will be based on the bed occupancy and OPD (outpatient) inflow. If a hospital started functioning 10 years ago with 100 beds it is quite obvious for the patient strength to record an increase. The government should monitor such situations and sanction staff according to the latest needs.” With guidelines of several bodies like WHO and MCI advocating for one nurse per bed, particularly in ICU, labour wards and other critical care wards, activists expressed alarm over the staff shortage at MGMGH.
General secretary of Doctors' Association for Social Equality Dr Shanthi Ravindranath said, "Nursing care is most important. It is the nurses who will be with the patients, monitoring them for the most time. Be it the OPD, inpatient or the ICCU ward, filling up vacancies for nurses is vital to healthcare.” When staff nurses are not there, it would be huge labour exploitation from the doctors’ side as well as underutilisation of their capacity. The crisis is not a fight between doctors and nurses but a fight between the public and the government, Shanthi added.
When contacted, Minister for Medical and Family Welfare Ma Subramanian told TNIE, "The Medical Services Recruitment Board (MRB) process is going on for fresh recruitment. Last week a total of 237 medical staff were handed over joining orders by the CM. Once the process is complete we shall place them according to needs across the State.
At the same time we cannot appoint everyone anew. There are contract employees and MRB staff who can be utilised.” When asked how long it would take for the vacancies to be filled, the minister said, "By November the MRB process would be complete. By the beginning of next year the problem should be resolved."