The Health Department’s strategy in dealing with an inflated overtime budget has nurses at the Pietersburg Provincial Hospital fuming.
According to one of the nurses who spoke on condition of anonymity, the hospital was already experiencing a shortage of staff when the department implemented a decision to cut back on overtime a few months ago.
“We got accustomed to working overtime to ensure the hospital runs smoothly, but now the department says we won’t be compensated for additional hours worked.”
The stoppage of overtime compensation subsequently led to a delay in scheduled surgeries at the hospital, the source claims.
“This is a referral, provincial and specialist hospital. Very few doctors can operate without the assistance of nurses. The scrapping of overtime has led to theatre nurses not being available, which means patients come from as far as Thohoyandou and Malamulele for surgery and then cannot be assisted.”
This, however, was refuted by Spokesperson Neil Shikwambana, who said even though overtime work has been stopped due to budget constraints, the department has implemented shift work as opposed to overtime.
He said even though there are teething problems here and there, the rescheduling of operations occurred even during the period of overtime being compensated, “so for nurses to attribute the delays to our shift system is simply dishonest”.
“This means that thanks to proper planning, there is a system which will assist if and when shortages do occur. We currently do not have a crisis at that level.”
Health MEC, Phophi Ramathuba, in turn said the department has been empowering regional hospital staff with specialist skills to reduce the workload of the provincial hospital.
“The Rural Health Matters campaign has assisted in reducing the operations backlog in our provincial hospital as staff in regional hospitals now also have the necessary expertise and therefore fewer patients are referred to the provincial hospital. Specialists in various disciplines have availed their services through this campaign, for us to decentralise especially operations which can be done at regional level.”
Story: Umpha Manenzhe
