TIRUCHY: A year has passed since medical staff at Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Government Hospital (MGMGH) raised complaints about the district’s largest government super speciality hospital functioning with only around a tenth of the staff nurse strength stipulated by the Indian Nursing Council but the situation has hardly changed for the better.
Save for the addition of 25 staff members on deputation, the headcount remains the same as last year, say “overworked” nurses. According to medical guidelines, a nurse-patient ratio of up to 1:1 must be maintained in critical care wards.
In the 1,600-bed MGMGH, which had 187 nurses last year, only 25 nurses, that too on deputation from Ariyalur Government Medical College Hospital, have since added to the city hospital’s nurse headcount. This leaves vacancies for 1,171 more nurses in the hospital. TNIE had in a report headlined, ‘Alarm rings as GH has only a tenth of nurses required’ in its edition dated September 10, 2022, flagged the issue.
While sources maintained that the hospital's doctor strength of 350 matched current requirements, a senior official said, "We have very few nurses in the night shift. In emergency wards, it becomes impossible for the doctors to handle the patients in the late hours. We need nurses for all three shifts." The hospital records an average daily footfall of 1,000 from the central region, sources said. A senior nurse at MGMGH said, "Many doctors think that we are not working efficiently. The truth is we are overworked. Many crucial wards are run with a few nurses, causing us fatigue."
When contacted last year, Minister for Health Ma Subramanian had said that the Medical Services Recruitment Board (MRB) was preparing for fresh recruitment and had assured that nurses would be hired taking into account the requirements of government hospitals across the State.
When TNIE reached out for comment about the continuing shortage, the health minister said, "We will recruit [nurses] through the Medical Services Recruitment Board (MRB) and the process is underway. As a section of nurses approached the court asking to prioritise those who worked during Covid there has been a delay in recruitment. Now we are concentrating on fresh recruitment and we would take in around 4,000 new nurses by next month and depute them to government hospitals based on their needs."