Nurses strike: Leaves, vacations cancelled, doctors return GMCs

Nagpur: The nurses’ strike in both government hospitals of Nagpur continued even for the fourth consecutive day on Monday and the patients were at the suffering end. The directorate of medical education and research (DMER) issued an emergency order and cancelled all the planned leaves and vacations of doctors in the medical colleges and government hospitals on Sunday. Following this order, doctors started joining the hospitals on Monday.
As nurses were not available, the responsibility of taking care of the patients was on the resident doctors who had to work extra as their central committee is supporting the nurses’ strikes. The union of nurses alleged that no government authority came for the negotiation and they are feeling insulted.
“We want a ministerial-level discussion on our demands while the government is insisting the administrative-level discussion. This won’t solve any problem. More than 20,000 nurses across the state are on leave and we need the ministry to step in,” said Sumitra Tote, state secretary of the Maharashtra state nurses association.
Both the government medical colleges in Nagpur were seen struggling to manage the situation on Monday as the first day of the week reported good rush in the OPDs. Only serious patients were being admitted while others were being asked to go home in most of the OPDs. In GMCH, the administration struggled to involve trainee students from nursing colleges to manage the show. In IGGMCH, a group of nurses is working while another group affiliated with the union that called for the strike is not working.
Sources at the state medical education department said that minister Amit Deshmukh is reluctant to discuss the issue on the ministerial level and wants it to be tackled by the director and secretaries of the department.