Public healthcare system slammed at JSC town hall meeting

LONG wait times, bad attitudes from staff, and disappearing patient files were some of the complaints from the public about the local healthcare system at a joint select committee town hall meeting on social services.

The meeting was chaired by Independent Senator Dr Paul Richards on Wednesday afternoon at the Cabildo Building, Port of Spain.

Audience member Gillian Trumpet said she recently went to the Port of Spain General Hospital at 4.45 am, and there were several elderly people ahead of her.

She only got to see a doctor at 11.15 am and after waiting for medication, left the hospital at 3.30 pm.

While she said she is thankful for the free services, she believes both the wait time and attitudes of members of staff are problematic.

"Honestly speaking, they're rude to the patients.

"They're (the elderly) asking questions because there are no young ones with them, but to be yelled at or spoken down in a derogatory manner..."

She said having one dispensary is also insufficient for the high volume of patients that visit hospitals daily.

In addition, she said doctors need to listen to their patients and recalled when she visited the hospital owing to symptoms of menopause.

She said the doctor told her she was not experiencing menopause and was just depressed and should see a psychiatrist.

The doctor, she said, also inaccurately assumed she had cancer when she mentioned she had a hysterectomy.

Her patient file also went missing. Had she not taken photos of the file and stored it in her phone, she said she would have been waiting even longer.

Another audience member, who was in an accident 19 years ago, said her first patient file, which was "thick like an encyclopaedia" got lost. Her second file was also lost.

"With our country following the new age of technology, why isn't the system computerised?"

The committee asked the audience whether it was satisfied with the current regional health authority (RHA) model.

Head of the TT Registered Nurses Association Idi Stuart said smaller RHAs work "reasonably well" but the larger ones "appear to be struggling a bit to really deliver quality care."

He said it was unfair to ask if the RHA model is sufficient, as it was framed after the UK model, which has "other systems to assist in delivering care and not totally focused just on the RHAs."

Nurse manager Avion Drayton-Bailey said she has been waiting for two years to get an ECHO test (cardiac ultrasound) done in the outpatient clinic she is in charge of.

"You would think that even being in the system, I would have been able to get through..."

She said the waiting period is very long as she visited in 2021 and only got an appointment a year later.

She slammed TT's idea of telemedicine and said it is "not real telehealth or telemedicine."

She said the doctor called and asked if she was still waiting on the ECHO test, and that was the end of the conversation. It was only later she was informed that was considered as her clinic visit.

Another nurse at the Diego Martin Health Centre said management takes too long to fix or replace broken/faulty equipment. She recalled reporting one of the three ECG machines being down but was told there were still two, and then both of those also broke.

"You always have to be going around some red tape, go up a hill...We trying to help people here, and when people get frustrated, they abuse the staff."

Retired doctor Dr Jennifer Rouse said many medical school graduates come to her for mentorship, and some wait years to be placed in the public healthcare system. She said they quickly get jobs in other countries compared to TT.

Committee member and Minister in the Agriculture Ministry Avinash Singh said his grandmother's patient file was once lost, and he believes TT must "move away from this hardcopy, paperwork system...

"Move into digitalisation where you could go into any health facility in the country, and your entire medical records will be at the disposal of the staff."

On CDAP (Chronic Disease Assistance Programme), some said "lower-end medication" is provided, with one healthcare professional agreeing, saying those medications are often ineffective.

Others called for more specialists to be hired, as doctors who are on call sometimes still have to tend to patients on wards, deal with the families of those patients, have clinics to attend and may have surgeries to do in one day.

The town hall meeting was the first of its kind, and Richards said there would be more.