Severe shortage of staff plagues Tims Hospital

It was not just long delays in providing food for Covid19 patients that plagued the Telangana Institute of Medical Sciences (Tims). According to sources, even the hygiene inside the wards, including the ICUs, had left much to be desired. At the root of most of the problems plaguing Tims is severe staff shortage, right from sanitation workers, patient attenders, nurses, to duty doctors.

To the horrific conditions that patients in Tims get left in from time to time, including the dead lying next to the living for hours in the ICUs, can now be added at least one case of a patient in the ICU, who was left to wallow in urine and stools the patient passed while in bed. “It was a horrible scene,” according to a source. This, however, was an incident that occurred a few days ago.

There are just not enough sanitation staff at the hospital. A contractor who won the outsourced job contract, did bring some women from Ghatkesar but several of them left not wanting to work in a Covid-19 hospital. The few left, are just not enough to serve on the eight plus floors – in which patients are now housed — of the 13-floored hospital building.

For a hospital that currently is treating around

600 high-dependency Covid19 patients, there are just some 30 odd nurses, working in two shifts. The ground flood ICU, with about

16 patients has two nurses at a time, while the ICUs on the other floors, just have one each. These patients require constant attention. “There is no way two nurses can manage the needs of so many ICU patients, who require so many different services, many of them at the same time,” a source told Deccan Chronicle.

“On an average, there is just one nurse for 40 ICU patients at Tims,” a senior doctor said.

There is also a need for at least another 50 duty doctors, it was learnt. Some who were recruited recently on short term contracts, refused to join. Some who

joined have left saying the `40,000 pay was just not worth the risk and the effort, while others are learnt to have made excuses of joining at a later date.

Doctors and nurses who are Covid-19 positive are being asked to come to work, it was learnt, while some of the doctors have said they pray that they do not catch Covid-19 and end up at Tims as patients. And if the current, feebly numbered staff – cutting across functions – are all tested, at least half of them will end up as being Covid-19 positive, such are the conditions at TIMS, a doctor told