More than uniform: Short film celebrates grit of Cama Hospital nurses

The short film — More Than Uniform: Nurses at the Frontline of 26/11 — by the faculty of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) and students of the National Institute of Design (NID) honours the effort of nurses who saved over 150 patients and will be released on Friday, the 13th anniversary of the Mumbai terror attack. A trailer of the film was released at IIMA on Thursday.

Professor Rajesh Chandwani, faculty Human Resource Management, IIMA, said, “These are the humanitarian values that emerge during a crisis and not trained under any human resource management.”

The idea of making a short film on 11 nurses of Cama Hospital, the unsung heroes, came in 2019 during an ongoing project at IIMA by National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

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“While working on a project that involves framing guidelines for disaster management for hospitals, there was a mention of Mumbai terror attack at Cama Hospital. Till that time I dind’t know about this… and like me, many people do not know about their story. The attack on Taj Hotel was highlighted and everyone celebrated the Taj staff but similar recognition was not given to these nurses… After 13 years, we decided to celebrate Cama Hospital nurses,” said Chandwani, who is also the chairperson of Centre for Management of Health services at IIMA heading the project.

While the interviews for the film were shot virtually amid the Covid pandemic, the makers of it shared that working on it was an “emotionally breaking down” process.

“Not just the terror attack, the Covid pandemic also proved the grit and spirit of hospital nurses,” said NID student Anshuman.

Sharing the experiences of the night when armed Pakistani terrorists stormed through the hospital, nurse Laxmi Shridhar Shetty said, “We did not have any kind of training to deal with such a situation but I had only one thing in mind — come what may, we have to save our patients. We used all means that we could think of then.” Laxmi added that there should be training module of disaster management in hospitals.

From blacking out the wards, switching off the mobile phones of nurses and patients, assisting deliveries in silence, blocking ward gates with stretchers and wheel chairs and keeping spirit ready to throw into terrorists’ eyes in case they barge in, Yogita Bagad, another nurse, said every nurse was involved.

On the night of November 26, 2008, terrorists used hand grenades to flee from the terrace and killed two security guards outside Cama Hospital, along with injuring a clerk. In the 40-50 minutes of firing, the terrorists also took hostages, including doctors.