Battle continues over changing room

Medical students performing nurses’ duties	Nurses blocking the construction

The battle between nurses and doctors at the Peradeniya teaching hospital over a ‘changing room’ in a surgical theatre has caused serious inconvenience to the patients with most of them getting themselves discharged and overcrowding of the Kandy hospital as a result.

Despite an order by Kandy Chief Magistrate Sumudu Premachandra for the nurses to return back to work, only 15 of them who were ordered to return to work had come back on Friday while others had stayed away from work.

Hospital sources said that though the 15 nurses returned to work, they were not performing their duties but remained in rest rooms. So far male and female doctors have been forced to share the same rest room and the health ministry had permitted the partition of a separate rest room in the surgical theatre.

However nurses objected to the move and blocked the construction work. A series of photographs shows the developments since last Saturday at the Kandy Teaching Hospital.