Johannesburg - Student doctors sleeping at hospital casualty wards, late bonus payments, workplace safety and lack of resources.
These are just some of the grievances the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (Denosa) and the South African Medical Association (Sama) will be voicing as they launch the Positive Practice Environments campaign through a solidarity march to Gauteng Premier Nomvula Mokonyane’s office on Thursday morning.
Denosa spokesman Simphiwe Gada said yesterday health had been on the front pages of newspapers since the beginning of the year.
“You go to Mankweng (Hospital, in Limpopo), where 500 babies died in a space of three months, and the community had lost confidence in that hospital and they organised a march.
“A student doctor was raped at Bara (Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital); last week a doctor was attacked at Tembisa Hospital; currently at Far East Rand Hospital, patients are sleeping on stretchers on the floor… These are the things that create a negative environment for healthcare professionals.”
The campaign is centred on eight pillars, Gada added, one of which was payments.
“Currently, the Gauteng Department of Health owes doctors and nurses bonus payouts for the 2008/09 cycle. There is a collective agreement relating to that, but now the department has pleaded poverty, and that is unacceptable.
“People work overtime and aren’t paid. Currently, people are paid after three months or are given time off. A person doesn’t work for time off, they work for money,” he continued.
A lack of resources was also a major issue facing healthcare workers, Gada added, and it was putting the lives of many at risk.
“People are told to go to 24-hour clinics, but when they get there, they have to call an ambulance to take them to hospital because these clinics cannot function as they have inadequate resources. This has to stop.
“The Department of Health is misleading the public by encouraging them to use these community centres when they know they won’t receive help there,” he said.
Gada cited the examples of the Chiawelo Clinic in Soweto and Johan Heyns Clinic in Vanderbijlpark, saying that anyone who went there after 4pm with a chest stabbing or gunshot wound needing an X-ray ran the risk of dying because the radiographer left work at 4pm.
“For us to go to the Premier’s Office is a show of frustration. The MEC (Hope Papo) is aware of the issues and we have had many meetings with him; we have summarised the issues for him.
“He never bothered to respond. He only responded when we threatened action in July, and that response was thrown out because he responded just for the sake of it; it wasn’t detailed,” Gada said.
Thabang Sonyathi, the treasurer of Denosa, said the march today would also be about raising awareness that the circumstances under which nurses and doctors worked also contributed to the low standards in public healthcare facilities.
“We are tired of delivering substandard services, it’s pitting us against our communities,” he said.
Depressing diagnosis of a physician:
This is a letter written by a doctor working in one of Gauteng’s public health facilities, who asked to remain anonymous:
I write this in my room, after another sleepless night tending to the needs of others. I am tired to my core, yet I am unable to sleep because of the stress and anxiety I constantly feel.
I have spent the last 24 hours saving the lives of my patients, and yet I have received nothing but abuse – from my colleagues, other healthcare providers and, mostly, the very people I am trying to help.
I love my job. I have wanted to be a doctor since I was 13.I love helping people. I have had more thank-yous, hugs and even kisses than I can remember.
But these moments get fewer every day. Gone are the days when doctors (and other health-care providers) were treated with respect. Our consulting rooms are filled with people who view us as a service industry, little more than McDonald’s cashiers, to serve their needs as quickly as possible.
We spend our nights dealing with “clinic jumpers” who call ambulances at 2am for their two-week-old flu. Patients that don’t have medical aid, yet demand to be seen within 20 minutes of their arrival.
We are in a flawed system that is collapsing around us as we speak. Patients are expected to be seen at clinics – the majority of which are understaffed, understocked or just filled with the lazy and incompetent.
They end up being undertreated, or falling through the cracks, and arriving at hospital when their conditions have progressed to such a state that little is left but a comforting hand while they die.
We are forced to make do with incorrect equipment because we have nothing elseto use. The majority of our equipment is either broken or running at half-capacity.
No government official will ever grace the wards of a state hospital – for them it is their private hospitals, with their medical aids
And my biggest problem is that I do not know how much longer I (or my colleagues) can cope. It is getting to the point where I am becoming a doctor who loves his job yet hates his patients.