Patients left in the lurch as nurses go on lunch
Despite various intervention from Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), Khujwana Clinic outside Tzaneen remains resolute to its poor service as patient are left stranded when nurses go for long lunch breaks at once.
The TAC organized the community dialogue with the residence of Khujwana Village under the banner #FIXKhujwanaClinic in order to address challenges at the clinic, which included long hours for lunch.
TAC Khujwana branch chairperson, Rodgers Mashabela said the situation at the clinic was appalling and called on the health department to address their grievances about the unbearable conditions.
“We are concerned about the state of the clinic and the behaviour of the nurses. We are getting too many complaints from the community about that clinic, but the disturbing one is nurses going on three hour lunch breaks with no nurse assisting the patients while they are gone. How can that happen?” said Mashabela.
“The worrying thing is that we have held various community dialogues to address challenges at that clinic. We engaged community stakeholders including representatives from the Department of Health, but nothing has changed.
We cannot let patients be subjected to this poor service on our watch.
The department must address this issue as soon as possible,” he said.
Department of Health provincial spokesperson, Neil Shikwambane, agreed that the alleged behaviour of nurses was unacceptable and said the department would investigate the matter.
“It is not supposed to be like that. At the clinics, just like hospitals, nurses should allocate time properly to allow them to work interchangeably when it comes to lunch.
All nurses cannot go to lunch at the same and leave patients unattended,” said Shikwambane.
“The planning system – called the OSD [Occupational Specific Dispensation] – deals with this matter and says that nurses should work in an environment that allows for them to work awkward hours.
So it is not unheard of for one nurse to take some time off at 10:00 or 12:00 so that another can then go off at 13:00.
It is this challenge that we will investigate and correct,” Shikwambana concluded.Mashabela said the TAC Khujwana branch had organised a meeting with the clinic’s Sister in Charge together with the community stakeholders in order to address challenges. – Health-e News.
