Gujarat: 325 final-year nursing students from 11 colleges to be deployed as COVID-19 sahayaks
Gujarat: Considering the increasing cases of COVID victims in the state and the scarcity of healthcare workers, the state government of Gujarat has decided to deploy final year nursing in government hospitals. The final year nursing students are most likely to join their duties from September 21st and they will be referred to as nursing assistants (sahayaks).
The notice to this effect was issued by special duty officer Vinod Rao wherein he invoked the disaster management act to rope in nursing students.
According to The Indian Express, almost 325 final year nursing students belonging from 11 different nursing colleges of the state will be deployed to fulfil the necessity of more health care workers in SSG hospital and Gotri Medical College. While SSG hospital is run by the civic body and Gotri medical college is run by Gujarat Medical Education and Research Society (GMERS).
The GMERS Gotri is already extending its services to more than 300 COVID victims, while SSG has 312 patients of the 1,422 active cases currently. Officials of Gotri Medical College also informed that they are facing problems in managing the facility efficiently and also in providing treatment to the patients due to the scarcity of workforce and nursing staff; hence the authorities decided to take the help of final year nursing students.
A senior official told The Indian Express that "The hospital staff is finding it difficult to cope with the increasing number of patients. The nursing staff has been working tirelessly on multiple shifts, without much break since April. Most of the nurses are undergoing stress to the extent that they complain of strained relationships at home. So many of them are young mothers and are constantly worried about their children. While this is a long fight, we need to have more staff strength to ensure that we can slowly ease pressure on the staff that has been on the frontline since April."
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