- Hospitals failing to dispense basic drugs
- Our warehouses are empty say Health minister Obadiah Moyo
- Nurses say doctors absenting themselves to engage in private practice
- Doctors say nurses no longer duty conscious, sometimes rushing to catch the cheaper Zupco buses
SENIOR Health Doctors Association (SHDA) are at loggerheads with the Zimbabwe Nurses Association (Zina), with the two trading barbs over who is to blame for the negligence of duty currently apparent in most public health institutions countrywide, Zim Morning Post has heard.
In a Parliament Portfolio Committee hearing on Health held Wednesday, SHDA raised concern over the absence of nurses and medical tools in hospitals, saying the new arrangement by nurses to work certain hours per week had resulted in a great risk to patients.
“Both senior and junior doctors are coming to work without a doubt, but doctors are all there twiddling their thumps, doing nothing because there are no nurses to help them, and the tools of trade are not there (as well),” SHDA said.
Bothwell Mbuvayesango, an SHDA board member, said the new system where nurses worked two to three days a week was not favourable to patients, with nurses no longer duty conscious, sometimes rushing to catch the cheaper Zupco buses before handing over to the next person on duty.
“The new system, whereby nurses work for two to three days a week, puts patients at risk as there is no longer hand-over-take-over, as the nurses will be rushing to catch Zupco buses home,” Mbuvayesango said.
“It also disrupts our work as doctors. After our ward rounds with nurses, we often give recommendations on how we are going to help this (or that) patient, maybe for two days or a week. But when I come the next day, that nurse is not available; there is a new one who has started their shift which leaves us with no continuous assessment of the patient,” he added.
But Enoch Dongo, Zina secretary general, said nurses dutifully reported for work notwithstanding the difficult operating environment.
“Unlike doctors who do not come to work, attending to patients at their private hospitals, nurses are coming to work though incapacitated,” he said.
“For flexible working hours, we approached government. This is not our first arrangement with government; we did this in 2007, 2008 and 2009.
“It is also being done in other countries. We only reduced the number of shifts and increased working hours. After every shift, we do hand-over-take-over; the gap only exists administratively but practically, hand-over-take-over is being done in each and every hospital,” Dongo said.
Meanwhile, Health minister Obadiah Moyo said government was trying to improve medical supplies.
“Our warehouses are empty. I have tried to be innovative and find ways of replenishing them (with drugs and equipment). We are also restructuring for purposes of modernisation,” he said.
Standards in the public health system have plummeted, resulting in hospitals failing to dispense basic drugs such as anti-retrovirals and pain killers, leaving the lives of patients at risk.