Health services at Government Medical College and Hospital, Sector 32, were hit hard today as nurses went on a mass casual leave in support of their demands. The nurses joined duty after their demands were accepted by the hospital administration in the afternoon.
There are around 300 nurses in the hospital and most of them struck work.
The main services, which were paralysed due to nurses' mass casual leave were operation theatre, which remained closed for the entire day. Besides, the ward care was also severely affected.
On an average, 30 to 50 surgeries take place everyday at the hospital. However, on Friday all the operation theatres remained locked and all scheduled surgeries were cancelled.
For the ward care, the hospital administration deputed all the top nursing officials at work; on each floor one nurse was deputed.
The impact of the mass casual leave also hit emergency services. The patients were not even administered medicines and injections on time.
A great insensitivity was seen on part of nurses association, as it asked staff not to work in important areas like ICUs, CCUs and Emergency.
Jai Kishore, a labourer from Lalru and a patient of orthopaedics department, whose surgery was scheduled for Friday, had to go back without any treatment. He came to the hospital by hiring a cab but to no avail.
{{/usCountry}}Jai Kishore, a labourer from Lalru and a patient of orthopaedics department, whose surgery was scheduled for Friday, had to go back without any treatment. He came to the hospital by hiring a cab but to no avail.
{{/usCountry}}Nurses of GMCH-32 were demanding implementation of 35-point demand charter, which includes issue of staff shortage, demand of central service rule and pay-scale, nursing care allowance, transport allowance, children's education allowance for the staff nurses of the institution, change of designation from staff nurse to nursing officer, gazetted and restricted holidays for nursing staff, 100% promotion policy for nursing cadre, demand of nursing college in GMCH-32, extra day off for the staff nurse who works more than 172 hours a month and opportunity for higher education.