Nurses Protest Against Heavy Workload at FMC Abeokuta

Nurses at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Idi Aba in Abeokuta, the Ogun state capital, have protested heavy against workload.

The nurses who staged the protests within the hospital complex on Wednesday, also expressed anger at their exclusion from the 2023 promotion exercise.

Carrying placards with various inscription, the nurses said an acute shortage of staff has created a harsh working condition for them.

Chairman of the Centre’s Chapter of National Association of Nurses and Midwives, Olufunmilola Adekunle, said nurses in the hospital are now exhausted and stressed due to the heavy workload.

According to her, nurses in the hospital now work in two shifts, instead of the normal three shifts, to cope with the acute shortage of staff after they failed to get response to their plight.

The center’s head of clinical services, Dr. Kunle Adeniran said the issue of the exclusion of the nurses from the 2023 promotion exercise was beyond the management of FMC.

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He said the promotion exercise was handled by federal health ministry, and that the complaints of the nurses would be channeled to the appropriate authorities.

We want the government to come to our aid; we are working and we need to be paid for what we do. All our rights should be given to us. Our next action is to down tools. We are going to write them and stop working because, in the past months, we have seen our nurses collapsing.

In the past two months, we lost two nurses. Our lives are important. The workload contributed to the deaths and our nurses collapsing on duty. The only thing we enjoy from the management is this promotion; we don’t benefit from them, she said.

Reacting to the protest, the Head of Clinical Services of the hospital, Dr Kunle Adediran, told DAILY POST that the issue regarding the promotion was beyond the management. The promotion of nurses, he said, is dependent on the dictates of the Federal Ministry of Health.

He, however, promised that the hospital would write to the Federal Government about developments at the hospital.

We are all employees of the Federal Government and all that we do has to be done in compliance with the directives of the government. It is not entirely up to the management, he said.