Nurses at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences — who have been protesting since Monday evening after being told that disciplinary action would be taken against them for failing to scrub in at a new operation theatre — withdrew their strike on Tuesday after receiving assurance from the Registrar’s office that their demands would be met.
The NIMHANS Neuro Centre has seven main operation theatres with seven tables each and one emergency operation theatre with four tables. The administration had planned to open another table for which the nurses refused to scrub in on Monday citing staff shortage.
After a discussion with the heads of departments, they were assured that the new OT would not be opened until the staff crisis was resolved. However, around 4.30 p.m. on the day, the staff on duty received a memo from the administration stating they must give an explanation for refusing to attend to work and disrupting hospital administration; failing which disciplinary action would be taken against them.
Almost 150 to 200 nurses marched from the Neuro Centre to the administration building at NIMHANS on Monday morning, demanding that the administration retract the memo and provide assurances that no new facilities would be opened until additional staff was brought in.
The show-cause notices have been withdrawn, officials said. NIMHANS director B.N. Gangadhar said he was pursuing the matter with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and hoped to recruit 195 nurses.
“We hope that the nurses understand the difficulties of the patients and cooperate with the doctors,” he said.
Amith Kamath, staff nurse at the Neuro Centre said, “Right now, for every 24 beds, we have only 1 or 2 nurses on duty. If one patient takes a turn for the worse, other patients get neglected. In such a situation, opening another OT is unthinkable. We are refused sick leaves because there is nobody to fill in our places. The administration borrowed nurses from other departments to manage the OPD during the recent private doctors’ strike. All we are asking is that the administration not open new facilities without appropriate staff.”