Pune: Government employees, including nurses, entered day three of their indefinite pan-Maharashtra strike on Thursday, severely hampering patient care at the state-run Sassoon General Hospital (SGH).
Strike Continues After Inconclusive Meeting
Late in the night, a meeting with the state chief secretary ended inconclusively, with state government employees' associations deciding to continue their stir since discussions reached an impasse.
Impact on Patient Care at Sassoon
The impact was significant at Sassoon on the third straight day of the strike, particularly on new admissions and planned surgeries. A majority of nursing staff at the hospital responded to the protest call.
BJ Medical College and SGH dean Dr. Eknath Pawar admitted, 'In the past three days, the strike has impacted patient care at our hospital. Nurses are the backbone of any tertiary care hospital, and without them, we cannot function. Nursing college students deployed to fill in the gap are helpful, but they lack the required experience we need to run a hospital like Sassoon.'
With at least 748 nurses of the 900 deployed at SGH continuing the strike, surgeries, both major and minor, were hit. Hospital medical superintendent Dr. Yallapa Jadhav said, 'On Thursday, between 8am and 2pm, we conducted 65 admissions, 16 major operations, and only 17 minor operations. We had five deliveries in the past 24 hours, of which three were C-sections. We also had 1,040 patients at the OPD and 991 at the IPD.'
To optimize manpower, the hospital has shifted patients into a single ward, leaving some wards empty.
Comparison with Normal Operations
As per the hospital's data, the daily average out-patient department (OPD) numbers usually cross 1,555, while in-patient department (IPD) numbers are typically 1,081 per day. On average, the hospital performs 46 major surgeries and 166 minor ones daily, and 192 new patients are admitted every day.
Demands of the Striking Employees
State government nurses have joined the strike in response to the call made by the Maharashtra State Government Employees Confederation (MSGEC) to raise long-pending issues, primarily demands to implement the Old Pension Scheme and to increase the retirement age from 58 to 60 years.
