The Hindu Business Line : Hospitals headed for shortage of nurses

In fact, rapid expansion by corporate hospital chains like Apollo, Wockhardt and Fortis seem to outpace the flow of nurses and doctors into the system.

And this, coupled with the steady outflow of groomed-in-India nurses to the rest of the world, is leading to an acute nurse shortage in the country by 2011, according to a healthcare study by Crisil Research.

The high marketability of trained nurses from India, coupled with the rapid corporatisation of healthcare, will create the acute nurse shortage, Mr Sudhir Nair, Head of Crisil Research, told Business Line.

The need for trained manpower like paramedical staff will only increase as more hospitals come up in the country, said Wockhardt Hospital’s CEO, Mr Vishal Bali, echoing the study’s observation.

Despite large hospital chains undertaking rapid expansion, there is still a shortfall when it comes to the number of beds available to patients.

India needs to add 80,000 beds a year over the next 7-10 years to bridge this gap, he said, citing WHO data.

To meet this shortfall, more hospitals are only going to be added, which means that even more trained manpower will be required, he added.

The flow of nurses and doctors into the system is not keeping pace with the rate at which corporate hospitals are coming up in the country, said Mr Nair. About 47,000 nurses were added to the healthcare system in 2005-06, a Crisil researcher said.

The shortages projected are acute, despite the study clubbing general nursing and auxiliary nursing midwives into the nursing category.

As more large hospitals come up in the country, more general nursing midwives would be required, the researcher said.

The only way to stem the shortage is if corporates set up nursing colleges with the hospitals, Mr Nair said.

Wockhardt, for instance, runs two nursing schools in Bangalore and the courses are recognised by the Karnataka Nursing Council, said Mr Bali.

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