Source: 3 nurses for 40 ICU patients at SCB

Cuttack: The medicine ICU at SCB Medical College and Hospital here, where an unattended patient allegedly fell from the bed on Sunday, has been functioning with just 3 nurses for 40 patients, official sources said.

The figure is a stark deviation from Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) that mandates one dedicated nurse per patient for patients on ventilator support and one nurse for every two patients not on ventilators per shift.


Health authorities on Tuesday ordered a probe, after a video of Sunday’s incident went viral on Tuesday, triggering concern among attendants and public over monitoring and supervision inside the 40-bed ICU. SCB authorities also withdrew the in-charge professor of the medicine ICU and transferred three nursing officers.

Sources claimed that 3 nursing staff managing 40 ICU patients has been a regular procedure in SCB since years.

“How can an ICU run with three nurses? It is not possible for just three nurses to monitor so many critical patients at a time,” said Sudhansu Jena, an attendant.

“These are critical patients who need constant observation. If staffing had been adequate, such an incident might have been avoided. The govt should ensure recruitment of an adequate number of nursing officers for the safety of critical patients,” said Manmaya Das, another attendant

SCB superintendent Dr Gautam Satpathy, admitting the staff crunch, said, “We have informed the higher authorities. We will accommodate more staff in the 40-bed ICU once the posts are sanctioned.”

“Following the ICU incident, we have formed a six-member committee, headed by Prof Saroj Tripathy, head of the department of medicine, to ascertain the exact sequence of events and fix responsibility,” he said.

SCB, one of the state’s largest tertiary care hospitals, caters to patients from across Odisha and outside the state.

“Being a major referral hospital, the patient load at SCB remains very high. We are reviewing manpower deployment and will take appropriate steps to ensure such incidents do not recur,” he added.

Health secretary S Aswathy said the govt has begun the process to fill up key posts.