A nurse’s workload

ISLAMABAD: This is with reference to your article “PIMS nurses demand ED’s arrest” (April 29). The issue was never about salary but stipends. Everywhere in Punjab nursing students are getting a minimum salary of Rs5,000 to Rs8,000 but PIMS, a federal hospital, gives only Rs2,700. The hospital serve referral cases from all over Pakistan and was the first to serve during disaster days. Student nurses worked in poor conditions, pulled 12-hour night shifts without taking any day off for almost 15 days or more, whilst staff nurses worked longer than that.

The department that the executive director is head of has the highest workload: there is only one nurse who has to act as a circulatory nurse as well as a paediatric nurse and in case of emergencies she will be assisting the scrub nurse as well. Nurses are meant to serve their patients but eight caesarean sections in six hours is asking too much of them.