Royal hospital clarifies on vacant beds, shortage of nurses

The Royal Hospital issued a clarification on a video clip about the refusal to accept Covid-19 patients despite the availability of beds.

In a statement released it said, "The Royal Hospital is the largest hospital in the Sultanate and one of the largest hospitals in the region, with a capacity of 1,200 beds."

There is currently a limited number of vacant and unused beds that are unused due to the shortage of medical and nursing staff following the significant increase in the number of ICU patients over the last two years. "More nurses are now attending ICU patients while some of them retired early, which has led to a shortage. The numbers indicate that the hospital needs additional numbers of nurses to be able to operate all services well."

Despite the shortage in the number of hospital employees in the recent period and the steady expansion of services, statistics indicate that the number of the hospital's visits have gone up by nearly 200,000 annually in the last five years and the number of operations increased from 8,000 to approximately 25, 000 operations annually, and the number of births increased from 7,000 to nearly 10,000, and the number of laboratory tests increased to more than 3m tests a year. There are huge increases in all services that cannot be mentioned all.