Speaking after a review meet with the hospital administrative officials, Mr Lobo said that the hospital was in dire need of additional staff, as there was severe shortage of nursing and clerical staff in the hospital.
The tie-up of the hospital with Kasturba Medical College Hospital has proved beneficial. Due to the tie-up, there are expert doctors available at the hospital and partial requirement of nurses and cleaning staff has been met. However, additional nursing staffs are required to attend to patients in different wards. Housekeeping needs to be improved. The hospital also faces shortage of beds in the ICU, which however cannot be rectified immediately as there is shortage of nurses. There is also a lack of infrastructure facilities such as ventilators in the ICU, he said.
Mr Lobo directed the Resident Medical Officer Dr Erappa to look into the severe shortage of supply of drugs to the hospital. He also directed that the pending works of the hospital among those that were sanctioned, be brought to his notice. Issues such as underground drainage problem, clean premises and increment of salaries of senior staff were also discussed in the review meet, along with other requirements of the hospital.
He said that the facility of X-ray machine should be installed in the orthopaedic ward, and directed the officials to shift the orthopaedic patients from the corridors to other wards. “Avoid placing the patients in beds outside the wards in corridors. If the number of patients is more, assign them to empty beds in other wards,” he advised.
He also said that drinking water facility should be installed in each ward.
Operation Theatre remains non-functional!
During the inspection of the wards, it came to the notice of the MLA that the minor operation theatre in the hospital had remained non-functional and unutilised due to want of staff.
The facility has remained empty from over ten years due to shortage of staff, although it has all the necessary equipment, he lamented, adding that most of the problems in the hospital had arisen due to lack of adequate staff members.
Nursing Superintendent of the hospital Shobha Nayak told few reporters that although all facilities were available in the minor operation theatre, there were no nurses as well as anaesthetists to operate in it. “Hence, it has remained non-functional from the past ten years or more. There are four out-patient departments in the hospital where nurses are required and cannot be dispensed to other wards,” she said, highlighting the lack of nursing staff.
“There are usually two nurses attending to about 60 patients on an average in each ward. The hospital has a little over 100 nurses currently working here while the requirement is that of 250 nurses. There are about 630 in-patients being treated here, and the count of out-patients yesterday was about 800. Normally, one nurse is necessary to attend to three patients, but in these circumstances, one nurse is forced to attend to atleast seven patients here, due to lack of staff. Even in the ICU, there are only two nurses to attend to seven patients,” she said.
The hospital has about 700 beds and a requirement of 250 nurses, for a start. However, Nursing Superintendent Rosamma said that only half the requirement has been met. “We regularly request for more nursing staff from KMC, but our pleas fall on deaf ears. There are no dialysis technicians to operate the dialysis units during the treatment of patients. Same is the case of ECG technicians,” she said.
The MLA inspected the general wards, orthopaedic ward, ICU, operation theatre, artificial limbs centre, burns ward and Regional Advanced Pediatric Care Centre (RAPCC) in the hospital.
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