The Civil Hospital is reeling from a severe shortage of staff forcing the nurses to work overtime without any day off for long periods.
The hospital is a 300-bed facility. However, the nursing staff available was not expanded since it used to be a 100-bed facility. Now there were only 47 sanctioned strength to look after the hospital, and ten were empty as well.
Staff nurses’ association president, Asha, said, “We don’t have any option but to work overtime and sacrifice our health and family life.”
While the new facilities, including ICU, isolation ward, swine flu ward, mother and child hospital were added, but, the nursing staff was not expanded. Earlier, there were only three wards, and three nurses used to look after those. Now, the wards have been increased, but, the number of nurses remained the same.”
Senior medical officer Dr Mandeep Kaur Sidhu said, “We have petitioned higher authorities to increase the nursing staff to around 135 to 140, which is the required strength as per Indian Public Health Standards.
There were a total of 238 posts for staff nurses in the district. Out of these, 55 posts were lying vacant.
Civil surgeon Jasbir Singh Aulakh said, “I have written to the director regarding the matter.”
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A day after a nursing sister committed suicide, the local health department on Friday sent fifteen nurses working on temporary duty at the Civil Hospital to different health centres across the district. These nurses were ordered to join temporary duty at the hospital on February 29. The nurse who ended her life on Thursday, had written to the higher authorities earlier this month, to demote her, as she was not being able to keep up with the increasing workload, said SMO Dr Neelam of Pakhowal Community Health Centre.
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