Worst for Care

"Worst for care" is the description the Ealing NHS Trust got from 76,000 patients who took part in a poll which was carried out by the Health Commission in the UK. The areas that is was judged on where: cleanliness, food, mixed wards, health delivery just to name a few...
I applaud the Health Commission for carrying out this poll and we in Ghana need to do the exact same thing here. Here in Ghana we do not have a Health Commission and when one wants to complain about health delivery or rather the lack of it, there is really no-one whom you can turn to and complain. This is very frustrating and one has to resort to the airwaves to make one's voice heard.

I recently was bereaved; I lost my mother and the sort of things we had to go through were just unimaginable. This teaching hospital is supposed to be Ghana's pride and joy but it is seriously lacking a number of things. First and foremost the staff lack human relations. These are non-existent and one is treated with disdain and contempt and woe betide you if you try and tell them that you happen to know some procedures, you will be termed as being "too known", a Ghanaian term for being a know it all. Next on the list is logistics. You walk into the pharmacy of the department only to be told that the items requested by the doctor are out of stock. So one starts one 'wild goose chase' for the items requested. One of such 'chases' lasted three hours until a doctor friend of mine told me quite frankly that the prescription the doctor had written was really for want of another word silly buggers!
Trust me I went to every pharmacy in this great city of ours but they all had variations of it and I was told to bring back the injectable version of it!! Third on the list of things lacking is training. I am an HR Consultant and how I would love to have those nurses and ancilliary staff in my training room! They would drop those snooty attitudes at the snap of a finger...my finger (smile)

At 2.30am we, that is my mother, myself and the 2-man ambulance crew, arrived at the Emergency Unit at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital and the first thing that struck me was the ward was full and there were no beds left! I had seen this several times on the television but was hoping that somehow this would have been a situation that would have been alleviated. My mother had to sit on the gurney from the ambulance from 2.30am until 10am! As if this was not bad enough, I had to actually take part in assisting my mother as the nurses on duty just couldn't be bothered to take instructions from the houseman(or rather housewoman). The young doctor on duty was apologetic and I did feel sorry for her because if her own staff could not adhere to her instructions, then I wonder how she was ever going to earn their respect. At this juncture, I must congratulate the Vice President H.E. Alhaji Aliu Mahama, for his Ambulance Service initiative to support the health sector. This service is free (trust me we used it thrice) and the staff are friendly and ever eager to be of assistance. Citisearch owes you a free training session!

No members of staff were available to assist with blood samples etc. (mind you there never are and you have to do everything yourself)..between carrying the bag with Mum's personal effects, I was juggling 4 iv's which weighed a ton(didn't know those things were so heavy!) and blood sample bottles which as you know are so delicate. Amidst all this juggling I was running as the distances from one department to another are so far and walking was just not an option. I burst into the central laboratory only to see a bunch of men including the security man, snoring their hearts out! I rapped my knuckles loudly on the door and received a sleepy stare from the security chap who mumbled something. Unknowingly to me, there was a pool of water on the floor right at the entrance to the lab which were droplets of water from the airconditioner above and the 'mumble' from the security chap was to watch out for the pool of water...thank goodness I saw it in time and did not go careering across the hall...

The lab technician eventually woke up, rubbed his face several times and blinked about 100 times before he saw me standing by his counter. He told me how much it cost and then asked me to leave the documentation and bottles on the counter. He strolled casually to the counter, keyed in the cost and then gave me a receipt and walked back to his bench and lay down in the same position I found him in. I shook my head in disbelief and muttered an expletive under my breath..

To be continued...