Healthcare worker: No staff rotations at Arima Hospital

A HEALTHCARE worker at the Arima Hospital is calling on Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh to investigate conditions at the hospital, as she said several of the staff have not been rotated out of their departments since the beginning of the pandemic.

Speaking to Newsday on condition of anonymity, she said the staff were under a lot of pressure, especially as many staff members were sick and in quarantine.

“There has been no rotation of staff between departments for the last two years. The staff are really burnt out and there are people who need to get some form of relief. Why are they not rotating staff? There are people who haven’t experienced working in other departments. Why not rotate them?

“There are a lot of staff on quarantine, a lot of staff are (covid-)positive.

"People don’t know there aren’t enough doctors, people come to the hospital and have to wait for many hours because they don’t have enough staff. At the covid tents, patients have to wait for hours. If you talk to any patients from there, sometimes they have to wait from 10 am to night-time to be treated, because the staff are burnt out and most of them are sick and on quarantine that people don’t know about. So this is something I would like the Minister of Health to look into.”

She said contrary to statements by Deyalsingh, the staff were not receiving counselling or days off.

“We work 40 hours a week, and there is no counselling or anything like that for the patients. Patients have been dying there every day. No counselling of staff in there, staff has to come to work, no day off, no stress days, no relief and it’s the same set of staff fighting the battle two years. "It’s not true what the Health Minister said. Maybe the minister doesn’t know about these things, I want to guess he doesn’t know, because no one is brave enough to say, 'We’re going through this and we’re going through that.'”

She said the situation is made worse because of some members of staff who do not come to work or don’t participate while at work.

“They want to penalise me and other staff members for talking out. There are people who don’t come to work: they don’t deal with them. I’m always on time, doing my job. Many days I’m working in a clinic by myself.

"Why are they picking on the ones who are doing the work? There’s a lot of advantage going on there, as some senior staff members want to sit down and let others do all the work.

"I’m not saying if a crisis comes, I won’t join in, because we’re in a pandemic, meaning that they could move anybody anywhere if they run short, but that’s not the problem in this case.”

On Wednesday, speaking at the ministry’s virtual media conference on covid19, the Health Minister reminded the population that healthcare workers are under stress, especially those on the frontlines. He said the RHAs were taking several measures.

“Each RHA is trying to rotate staff as far as humanly possible, remembering there are not another 2,000 fresh doctors you can drop into the system, and we have to accept that as the reality, not only here but worldwide.

“We try to do psychological counselling, the mental detoxification, give days off – we do all those things, but that is not enough. We need the public to assist us by being vaccinated so they will not go to hospital when they become ill.”

The North Central Regional Health Authority released a statement on Wednesday in response to media reports about conditions at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex. It said the staff who are engaging the current surge of very ill patients have been dealing with the rigours of the covid19 virus over the last two years without cease.

“In order to avoid burnout, the NCRHA tries to rotate staff, especially in high-traffic areas. Rotation also provides opportunities for other qualified members of staff to gain experience and expand their respective skillsets. These processes are not undertaken without the direct supervision and involvement of highly qualified senior team medical personnel.

It said as far as possible, individual departments were tasked with staff reassignments as the departments, would best know the strengths, weakness, schedules of the staff.

A response team leads psychological and psychiatric sessions. it said, "to build psychosocial resilience.”

The release also said several measures had been put in place to relieve staff, including hiring dedicated officers for work in covid19 facilities, bolstering locum pools of staff to replace those on leave, and diverting resources from non-covid19 to covid19 pathways, depending on the need.

The authority said where staff are working more than their contractual time, there is a compensation system in place.