Shortage of nurses ails Victoria Hospital

By Sahana Charan

BANGALORE, JUNE 27. Catering to thousands of patients from all over the State,

Victoria Hospital in the City is now confronted with an ailment of a different kind: An acute shortage of nurses.

The final report of the Task Force on Health and Family Welfare formed by the State Government has recommended that the nurse- patient ratio should be studied and accordingly, action taken to have sufficient number of nurses in hospitals. The Chairman of the task force is Dr. H.Sudarshan.

Ironically, the Government seems to have turned a blind eye to the problem. The Victoria Hospital, one of the oldest government hospitals in the City, which has 964 beds, is trying hard to cope with the increasing number of patients. But it has only 300 nurses. Thousands of patients throng the hospital everyday.

According to sources in the hospital, it needs at least 700 nursing staff to attend to patients in the various departments. The present number is grossly insufficient. The medical institution has nine operation theatres, which needs at least 30 nurses round-the-clock in shifts. The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) has four beds and the nurse-patient ratio here should be 1:1. With a proposal to increase the number of beds in the ICU to 10, the situation is likely to worsen.

For every three patients, one nurse is required in the burns ward. According to the Indian Nursing Council guidelines, at any given point, one nurse can take care of not more than 16 patients. But at Victoria Hospital, a nurse had to sometimes take care of 30 patients, sources said.

A senior doctor at the hospital told The Hindu: ``When established, the hospital had 500 beds, but the number of patients coming to the hospital has increased considerably over the years. The hospital has also added many specialty departments. But the number of nursing staff has not risen proportionately, which is causing a snag in the services. At any given time one-third of the total number of nurses are on leave or on deputation for higher education which leads to even greater shortage.''

Dr. R.Chandrashekhara, Medical Superintendent, Victoria Hospital, confirmed that there was a shortage of nurses which was hampering services.

To add to the dilemma, most of the nurses are overworked and cannot perform their duties efficiently, much to the chagrin of the patients who have to suffer ultimately. ``Because of shortage of nurses and Group D staff, some of the nurses have to work round-the-clock without a break. Sometimes an operation theatre receives more than 13 cases everyday and it is tiring for one nurse to attend to so many cases,'' a senior nursing staff said.

Dr. Seethalakshmi, Director, Department of Medical Education, told The Hindu that a meeting of the department was held recently in which this problem was discussed. ``It was decided that Victoria Hospital should get at least 30 more nurses. A proposal has been forwarded to the Government for recruiting nursing staff, but it has not been approved yet. As soon as we get a positive response from the State Government the recruitment process will commence,'' she said.

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