Huge patient burden strains revitalised George Hospital
But behind the fresh coat of paint and modern equipment that came with the huge cash injection, nursing staff and doctors are struggling to cope with the ever increasing patient load.
Hospital manager Dr Beverly-Anne Pedro shakes her head: ‘Sometimes we are running seven beds in our two bed high care unit or close to 37 patients in our 10-trolley overnight ward in trauma.’
Referring very ill patients to Groote Schuur or Red Cross Children’s hospitals in Cape Town is more often than not ‘simply not an option.’
‘They also don’t have the beds or the staff,’ sighs Pedro, adding that George Hospital is, as is the case with so many other hospitals, under pressure to discharge patients earlier because of the pressure on beds.
George’s proximity to the Eastern Cape also adds to the patient load as people come in search of the better resourced health services offered in the Western Cape.
Medical specialist Dr Susan Arnold interrupts her examination of a TB patient to answer a call from Ladismith Hospital wanting to transfer a heart attack patient. ‘I told them that they can send him, but that he will have to lie on a trolley in trauma. They tell us we can’t refuse patients, but what the hell must we do (if there are no beds),’ asks Arnold.
Hantie Langenhoven, sister in charge of the trauma unit, has seen it all. The unit sees between 800 and 1000 patients a week and ‘sometimes patients wait up to a week for a bed’.
‘It’s not really an ideal situation. The mattresses are thin, the patients need full-time nursing. For the past three weeks, we have been running at occupancy rates of 119, 136 and 132 percent,’ Langenhoven points out.
Short and slightly stocky, her brown hair swept into a bun, Langenhoven says the overnight ward has at times accommodated 37 patients. ‘Monday mornings you can arrive and every single trolley and chair will be filled with patients. We are here first and foremost for emergencies, but our nurses are working at ratios of one nurse to anything between 18 and 22 patients. Our night sisters have to nurse anything between 30 and 31 patients on a shift.
‘I mean, there is really no privacy possible in situations like that. The other night we had a woman aborting in the ward. It’s not good,’ sighs Langenhoven.
Langenhoven points out that many of their patients, of which a big chunk are from the Eastern Cape and other parts of Africa, literally walk past the primary health care clinics on their way to the hospital. ‘They don’t believe they get good care at the clinics,’ says Langenhoven.
The nursing staff tread the long passage between the nursing station and the overcrowded overnight ward countless times on their 12-hour shifts.
A patient from Thembalethu is already dead when a nurse checks on her. Earlier in the day, the young HIV-positive woman could be seen arching her back as she gasped for air from the oxygen mask.
‘Kwa! Kwa!’ The nurse gently slaps her several times, desperately trying to revive her and calls her name. A few minutes later the nurse pulls a bright red blanket over her head before rushing off to find a doctor to sign the death certificate.
‘We are running against the wind,’ blurts a nurse as she attends to patients in the overnight ward.
‘This ward is just not good enough. We have to fight to get a night dress for the patients. They can’t even wash here,’ she says.
‘Sick, old people lie here for five, six days on hard trollies,’ she adds bitterly.
‘(The overcrowding) has been like this for six, seven, eight years. There is space, there are solutions, but they (government) don’t want to hear. I mean, the men and women are mixed in this ward and a year ago we even had children here,’ says the nurse, who 10 minutes ago was attending to a life-threatening trauma case.
Pedro confirms that she is awaiting approval for the provincial health department to fill the new posts for the new wards.
In the meantime committed nurses and doctors are working tirelessly, attending to the poorest of the poor and sickest of the sick.
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