Sheikh Salman Amin
I write this not to seek a response. I do not want an inquiry committee to file a report that gathers dust. I write this as a “silent letter”—a plea from a professional to a system—urging you to listen, so that the silence of a non-functional machine never again becomes the silence of a lost life.
On January 13th at 4:00 PM, I stood at the gates of Emergency Department in GMC Anantnag. I was not wearing my scrubs that day; I was a grandson. But my eyes were still those of an ICU Nurse. I belong to this system. I know the adrenaline, the sweat, and the crushing pressure of a Government Medical College. I understand that chaos is the nature of our job.
But we cannot use “chaos” as a shield to deny basic healthcare support.
The collapse began at the very threshold. There was no working stretcher or wheelchair available at the entry. From the first step, the system was fighting against the patient.
When I brought my grandmother in—critical, breathless, and crashing—I expected the most fundamental law of emergency medicine to kick in: Triage. Instead, I witnessed the “Golden Hour” turn into a waiting game. Despite my pleas, the doctor on duty continued to attend to stable patients—those with mild symptoms who could afford to wait. My grandmother could not.
In the ER, a pause is not just a delay; it is a clinical decision. That pause cost us.
When attention was finally granted, the clinical judgment was baffling: I was asked to shift a patient in respiratory distress to a chair.
The failure cascaded as we moved to Casualty
Infrastructure failure: We fought for a bed, only to be given one with a defunct oxygen port. We had to shuffle patients ourselves to find a lifeline.
Staffing vacuum: In a casualty ward overflowing with patients, there was no nursing staff available to assist the doctor. The doctor was left fighting the tide alone, which inevitably leads to negligence.
The equipment graveyard: When my grandmother became unresponsive and her pupils dilated, we needed a simple ECG to confirm the rhythm. We waited 15 minutes for a technician. Then came the machine—Non-functional. A second machine was rushed in—Non-functional.
“Technical Fault” is what you called it. I call it a breach of trust.
How does a tertiary care centre serving two districts operate without a single dedicated, working ECG machine for emergencies? Where are the daily audits? A Radiology department full of staff means nothing if the machines are dead.
I understand the rush. I respect the burden on the doctors. But if the chaos is deafening, we need a system that cuts through the noise.
If a doctor is overwhelmed, there must be a Priority Alarm System—a “Code Red” protocol—that alerts the floor to a critical arrival, forcing the focus to shift from the stable many to the dying few.
Treating acute pain or mild symptoms efficiently gives the illusion that the hospital is working smoothly. But that is not the test. The test of a GMC is how it handles the breathless, the dying, and the crashing. On January 13th, the system failed that test.
My grandmother is gone. I am not asking for sympathy. I am asking you to work.
Fix the triage. Audit your machines daily. Ensure a stretcher waits at the door. Put a nurse in the casualty.
Do not let the rush be the excuse for another death.
(The author is nursing a graduate.)
