PESHAWAR: The increasing trend of wearing veil by the female nurses and doctors has been confusing the patients and their attendants at the public sector hospitals to get their assistance, say health professionals and relatives of patients.

`A nurse told me to inform her when half the glucose`s drip is left.

Later, I went to call the nurse but could not recognise as to who had administered the transfusion because four of the five nurses were wearing veil there,` said Ahmed Shah, a resident of Peshawar.

Mr Shah`s younger brother was brought to the accident and emergency department of a local teach-ing hospital with abdominal pain last month. His brother Javid Shah consumed the whole 1,000ml drip that included diuretics due to which he went into shock and died of overdose. The nurse who had administered the drip to the patient forgot and the patient`s brother failed to recognise her.

Actually, the patient needed a dose of 500ml.

According to a doctor, wearing of veil by female health workers creates problems in the intensive care unit (ICU), cardiology wards and operation theatres where the patients and their relatives must know the nurses by face so they could be called in emergency.

He told Dawn that Taliban had allegedly pasted threatening letters on the walls of nursing hostels at Hayatabad Medical Complex five years ago, asking the female medical staf f that they should wear Islamic dress and cover their face and those not complying with the instructions would face consequences.

`While coming out of the hostel, we had confronted a bearded manwho had warned us to wear Islamic dress or their hostel will be blown up. Don`t take this warning lightly as you know we know how to implement our orders,` a senior nurse at the HMC narrated the story.

`I feel uncomfortable in veil because of the nature of our job, but I still feared Taliban reprisals, she said.

Nurses are responsible for bedding and clothing of the patients besides recording their temperatures, blood pressure, pulse and respiration and administration of the oral as well as intravenous drugs, which is not possible when one is wearing a veil, she said.

Same is true for the lady doctors.

`The patients often complain that they fail to contact the veiled doctors easily due to which they face problems,` said a surgeon.

A local physician said that wearing veil by female nurses had badly hampered their communication with patients and doctors. `More often the doctors complain that their orders were not followed by nurses. Upon inquiries into such complaints, we came to the conclu-sion that the doctors didn`t know as to which nurse they had issued instructions regarding certain patients,` he said. He also contended that Niqab was an obstacle between the patient and nurse to interact.

`We are facing acute shortage of nurses. We have enhanced stipend and salaries of student and staff nursestocatertoneedsofpatients, said sources in the health department.

They said that they could not ban use of veil because it would draw criticism from the people.

Doctors say that people at the hospitals know the nurses and doctors very well who do not wear veil and they feel it easy to communicate with them, but those wearing it create problem because all wear the white uniform and veil.

They said that in 2008 the Egyptian government had passed a legislation to prohibit nurses in public hospitals from covering their faces af ter a poll showed that 90 per cent of the patients disapproved of nurses who covered their faces.