PIMS nurses protest excessive work

Complain that they have been denied holidays for Eid, decry difference in allowance of provincial and federal nurses

ISLAMABAD: Nursing staff at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) staged a demonstration to protest their workload, no promotions and lack of uniformity in perks and privileges between federal and provincial nurses.

Holding up placards inscribed with demands such as “give us our rights” and “we want justice” while standing outside the doors of the hospital, the nurses said that owing to a dearth of nursing staff at the hospital, their workload had increased manifold and they had to look after 30 to 40 patients in the general ward. This was nearly four times as many when compared to international practices of each nurse looking after eight patients. Likewise, there should be one nurse for one patient in critical care but currently, one staffer was looking after eight critical patients in the intensive care units.

They further complained that owing to the shortage of nurses at the hospital, they had been denied Eid holidays. The lack of leaves means they also face problems in pursuing higher education.

“The total approved strength of nursing staff at Pims is around 900. But only 400 are working at the facility at the moment,” said Imaamudin Rind, president of Pims Nursing Association (PNA).

He said the hospital had initiated the process of inducting 250 nurses in 2012 but it stalled due to the merger of the hospital with the Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University and (SZABMU) and other bureaucratic delays.

The protesters lamented that no new nurse had been inducted into the hospital since 2013. And with a number of nurses retiring since and additional departments opening, the gap between the number of occupied and vacant seats had widened.

They also complained about the delays in promotions, noting that some staff had retired in the grades in which they had been working for years. The last round of promotions, they said, took place in 2014 after a gap of eight years.

Ashraf, a male nurse, said that apart from the workload, there was a huge difference in utility allowances which are paid to the provincial nursing staffers and those from federal.  Federal nurses, he said, are paid Rs300 kit and Rs800 ration allowance while the provinces pay up to Rs11,000 to their nursing staffers in various hospitals.

Moreover, some student nurses who were studying for their diplomas complained that they were being paid less than Rs7,000 as stipend in the capital while other provinces have been paying them stipends equivalent to the basic pay of a nurse.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 13^th, 2017.