The shortage of health professionals, not enough bed-linen, disgruntled workers, long queues and poor service are some of the problems affecting the country’s health system. But can anything be done to address the issues? The question reigned supreme in the mind of the Deputy Health Minister, Dr Molefi Sefularo, when he suggested a series of colloquiums called ‘Consultation on the National Programme for Quality Improvement’ to Health Minister, Barbara Hogan.
‘There are some things that seem to be obvious and common issues that affect the health sector. These are typically the things that we know that people are concerned (about), the health care providers are concerned about’¦ and we thought that we don’t need to rediscover them. We don’t need to pose the questions all over again. Let’s bring people together who have been involved in this and have a national conversation about these matters that concern the nation’, said Sefularo at the first of such colloquiums in Johannesburg, recently.
Addressing the meeting, Health Minister, Barbara Hogan, highlighted the issue of a growing phenomenon of uncommitted health professionals, in particular, nurses who are the main providers of health care.
‘Certainly, it’s unacceptable’, said Hogan. ‘I think we’ve all had experiences of a bad nurse phenomenon or that kind of bad treatment’¦ Let’s go back to why a nurse, why would anyone, be behaving with that indifference. Do we understand that? We don’t need to commiserate. We don’t need to necessarily agree. But we need to understand what that motivation is. Not all the bad nurses’ phenomena are because nurses are inherently bad or we’ve got a bad bunch in there. If you look at some of the comments that nurses give from Chris Hani Baragwanath, they say, ‘we are so over-laden with work that we ourselves are becoming monsters. We can’t help. We have to ignore. We’ve got to be rushing from one crisis to another’.’
Deputy Health Minister, Molefi Sefularo pointed out that the colloquiums will ‘look at ways of improving the systems and processes that lead to a break-down in the quality of health care and the erosion of compassion and ethics of health professionals such as nurses’. Health Minister Barbara Hogan said ‘the aim is to build a health system that all South Africans can be proud of’.
‘We do want to acknowledge that such interaction was not satisfactory in the past’, added Sefularo.
