There are problems at GPHC, Michael

Sep 22, 2013 Features / Columnists, My Column

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In the past two weeks I have been receiving complaints about the operations at the Georgetown Public Hospital, which to my mind is the best health institution in Guyana. I arrive at that conclusion because I know many of the doctors who work there and I have seen the care provided by the hospital. Recently a lot seemed to be going wrong at the hospital and I knew where it all began and with whom.
I will start this week; in fact, I will start with what happened on Saturday September 21, this year. I am at home, barely out of bed when I get a call. A man’s wife is in the final stages of her pregnancy. She goes to the hospital and fails to get medical attention. The man does the only thing he understands; he goes to Kaieteur News, gets my number and calls me.
I heard the panic in his voice. He tells me that his wife is in pain and I simply tell him to go back to the hospital and demand that his wife be examined. He probably did because he has not called me again.
On Friday I heard another horror story out of the hospital. A renal failure patient goes to the hospital for a session of dialysis. A doctor is informed, but this so-called medical professional informs a nurse that he is off duty. I do not profess to remember all the details, but I do know that the man did not get his dialysis and he died.
On Friday night, some people in a car crashed in the vicinity of the Dynasty night club. One of the victims is a Canada-based woman. Three of the occupants of the car are rushed to the hospital shortly after midnight. By five yesterday morning they had still not even been attended to.
These are just some of the horror stories coming out of the hospital. Earlier this week, a woman from the North West District is discharged from the hospital. She has a catheter in her arm. She goes to the nurse to inform her that the catheter is still in place.
Lo and behold, the nurse asks the woman in as brusque a manner as most uneducated people could, “You ain’t see ah doing something?” The woman leaves the hospital, but fortunately an employee who knows her spotted her with the catheter in her arm and turned her around. A nurse eventually removes the instrument.
My son informed me that one morning, perhaps about one o’clock, he rushed a girl to hospital. The girl had been suffering a serious allergy attack. He said that he was made to sit in the waiting room until five that morning—a wait of four hours —before he could access medical attention.
He said that while there he saw a man bleeding from the neck. This man, too, had been sitting there just waiting. My son said that he called out to somebody whether they wanted the man to bleed to death. Only then did the man get attention.
Chief Executive Officer, Michael Khan, is keen to ensure that the hospital is seen as a professional institution. He does not take kindly to negative reports about his hospital and I can understand that. However, his Mother Hen persona simply allows the nurses to get away with murder. For one, the nurses, when they realize that their substandard work is going to get exposed they either run to security or to Michael Khan with the name of the person who is going to do the expose.
I remember the days not so long when nurses were proud people. They loved the uniform and they displayed it with pride. They jealously guarded their relationships with patients. That is not the case today, and it all began when Dr Leslie Ramsammy as Health Minister, announced that he would counter the migration of the qualified nurses by recruiting hundreds.
Three things happened here. For one, the qualification of those recruited left a lot to be desired. Then there was the training. He did not increase the tutors, so from the days when there were no more than thirty fully qualified nurses a year, the tutors were expected to train five hundred. It does not take much to understand how watered down is the training.
The third thing is that these new nurses suddenly behave like public servants; they are disrespectful of authority and are notorious clock watchers. Two of them get dismissed and they dared to invoke the press. It turned out that they were absent or late repeatedly. One of them claimed that she had a right to leave her post to go to lunch, regardless of the time.
Even doctors seem to have forgotten the Hippocratic Oath. They are seen chatting while people desperately need medical attention. This would not happen at a    private hospital. Even the doctors who behave less than professional at the Georgetown Public Hospital would behave professionally at the private hospital. The feeling is that the money is the calling card.
I also hear that some of the nurses moonlight. Again, they are like Jekyll and Hyde—two different characters —depending on where they happen to be working.
I am going to have a chat with Michael Khan, in the interest of the people who need the services at the hospital ,and I am going to have reporters hound the nurses who feel that the society owes them.

 

 

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