MORE doctors are needed to attend to patients at Life Entabeni Hospital’s trauma unit.
This is the opinion of Ahmed Khan, who approached Berea Mail following a recent visit to the hospital.
According to Khan, his wife had been injured in February and had been to the trauma unit at the hospital three times since.
“Every time we have been there, there has only been one doctor on duty in trauma, working from 7.30am. The last time we were there, I spoke to the person in charge of trauma, who agreed this was a problem. I was told the hospital outsourced for doctors and there was one available,” he said.
Khan said he and his wife sat at trauma from 7.30am until 11am. While they were waited they were joined by a further 22 patients who were there from 7.30am until just before 10am.
“Other patients also complained about this. During this time five ambulances arrived with five more people waiting to be treated. It is not good that, at a hospital with such a high reputation, we have to experience this. This one doctor running from one end to the other, he will have a heart attack and fall down in time!” said Khan.
He said he felt the hospital needed to do something about improving their service.
“I am not trying to put the hospital down. I just feel they need to address this problem. Surely they can get another doctor to help out,” he said.
Life Entabeni Hospital manager, Greg Swale, said on arrival at any one of the emergency units in the Life Healthcare hospitals, and in this particular instance, Life Entabeni Hospital, every patient is assessed and given a score which classifies the severity of their condition.
“A colour code is assigned to the patient, red is most urgent and green is least urgent. The patient colour coding system is used locally and internationally in accident and emergency units and is becoming an industry benchmark.
“The acceptable waiting period guidelines are immediate treatment for red code, treatment within 10 minutes for orange code, treatment within 60 minutes for yellow code and up to four hours for green code.
“It is important to note that all patients are treated as quickly as possible in the accident and emergency unit. In the event of a medical emergency, patients requiring immediate attention will be prioritised,” he said.
Swale said if waiting times were longer than the accepted international norms, the doctor practice contracted to manage the emergency unit would make the decision to bring in additional back up doctors.
“On this particular day, not all 22 were patients were waiting for the emergency doctor. Some were waiting to see various other specialists and nurses in the trauma unit,” said Swale.
