GPHC nurses to get specialist emergency care training

Nov 05, 2016 News

The Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation should be launching a specialist training programme this month to train nurses in emergency care. This was announced yesterday by head of the Accident and Emergency

Dr. Zulfikar Bux (Centre) delivering remarks during yesterday’s session.

Unit (A&E) at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, Dr. Zulfikar Bux.
The doctor was at the time addressing the media at a sensitisation session held at the GPHC resource centre. He said that this program will be the first ever in the entire Caribbean region.
“So this is history in the making by itself. We’ve made history by starting specialist training for doctors; we’re gonna do it for nurses.”
Dr Bux said that in recent times his department has managed to reduce the number of complaints and the number of issues when it comes to having patients who are dying because of mismanagement; or having morbidities because of mismanagement.
He said that this is due to having great specialist doctors hence the wisdom behind the imminent training of nurses for the department.
The doctor said that the hospital’s role is to build a team to handle the challenges faced at the A&E department. He said that the situation at the department is a very unique one in a very unique country.
According to Dr Bux, the A&E is the busiest department of the hospital. “This is literally the place that never sleeps, at any point, at any hour, at any minute there are always people who are sick that needs us to help to save their lives.”
He said that the emergency department turns over between 150 and 200 patients per day. He said that if medical personnel fail to intervene and attend to these persons within a certain time, a majority stand to lose their lives.
Dr Bux said that the media in its reporting should also give credit to the lives that are saved by the work of the emergency staff instead of always highlighting when someone would have died.
“Unfortunately, what generally go out are issues that come up and misconceptions for the most part that goes out to the public.”
The doctor said that the department has transformed a lot since 2010. He said that the GPHC’s A&E is the only emergency room in the entire country that has specially trained emergency doctors.
He said, “This is the only place that can provide services at a specialist level when it comes to emergency. So because of that we end up obviously being the national referral emergency department.”
The department head said that his unit takes in patients from Baramita all the way up to Skeldon Hospital. In addition, the unit is tasked to accommodate for walk-in patients and walk-in emergencies, Bux said.
“It is quite a challenging task to balance, because most other developed systems, where there would be city hospitals having emergency departments that would absorb those patients and they would have more national referral departments.”
As it relates to media reporting, Bux said that it is a challenge to balance getting a call from three different hospitals with patients coming in that are very sick.
He added, “At the same time you have two more from a motor vehicle accident coming in and are close to not doing well either. You need to balance that with a John Doe coming from the road who was involved in a fight with his wife who hit him and he needs a police medical; he’s more aggressive and needs help more than anybody else.”
Dr Bux said that because staff did not look at “John Doe” when he would have liked and instead saved the lives of the more serious cases, “John Doe” goes to the media and taints the image of the department.
The doctor said that the situation at his department is very challenging whereby there are only 17 beds to accommodate all the emergencies in the country daily and patients who would have been admitted.
“I have 17 beds and I would have about 80 patients that are very sick in my department, can you imagine having 17 beds and having to take care of 80 persons who can be very sick at any point in time? It is a very difficult task.”

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