Minister admits hospital ‘problems’
Greyghost:
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Makes you sick, doesn't it?
:bang:
I hope not! There is no one out there to care for you. :bang: :bang: :bang:
Can you imagine having a heart bypass done by a surgeon that is too tired to even see what he is doing?!?!?
Snoman:
This is merely 'transformation' in progress.
Isn't this what the 'grassroots' want?
:drummer:
White Boi:
Makes you sick, doesn't it?
:bang:
ingwe:
In his own words: DR Yossi Unterslak, an intern doctor at Chris Hani Baragwanath and Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic (formerly Johannesburg General) hospitals, relates some of his trials and tribulations
Not long ago my wife’s family was visiting from Australia. My father-in-law dropped me at work in the morning, spent the day in Joburg and boarded a flight that evening for Sydney. He landed in Sydney, drove home, unpacked and relaxed a bit and then phoned my wife — and I was still at work from when he had dropped me off. That’s roughly 30 hours straight at work with no rest during that time.
We are told there are laws in place to protect us and that we must not work more than 80 hours overtime per month, but if there are only a few of us who must cover every night, it is not possible, and if we don’t show up once we have completed our 80 hours’ overtime, people will die.
Anxiety
We live with the constant fear of contracting HIV; I have been on antiretrovirals three times. This means a month of being sick — vomiting on a daily basis. Then there is the anxiety and panic for six weeks till you do your HIV test to see that you are negative.
I have been splashed in my eyes with HIV-positive blood, once while stitching a patient at three in the morning, once while delivering a baby, and the final time while assisting with a Caesarian section.
The nursing sisters refuse to assist us with drips or taking bloods, saying that what they are paid doesn’t cover the risk of contracting HIV. This when some of the sisters earn more money than we do.
Out of cash
We are expected to run up and down the hospital to get urgent blood tests to the laboratory, run to collect urgent blood from the blood bank, push patients to the CT scanner and X-ray and theatre, all this because there are no porters available to us most of the time. This is not in our job description, but if we care about our patients, like we do, we have to do all this and more, something we are not paid for.
People may say that we choose to study medicine because of the greater cause — to help people — and we should not be fighting for more money. But at the end of the day we still need to feed our families and not have to stress at the end of every month that there may not be money for the last four or five days.
If the government does not offer us more money, the people with the ability to study medicine and with the love for medicine will not study it, and the entire healthcare system will collapse.
Already we see a wealth of senior experience leaving the public sector and moving to the private, leaving very few top senior specialists to continue training us and improving the standards of care in South Africa.
Medical aid
As it is we are learning from people with very little experience... therefore those qualifying as specialists are far from ready to maintain the standard of care that we should be demanding.
An intern earns roughly R8800 as a basic salary, after tax. We then get a set amount for our overtime, called commuted overtime, which is set no matter how many hours we work. Then there is an option to take out our benefits and give up our 13th cheque. If we do that, we get a total of a little over R15000 after tax.
Just to give you an idea of how far that doesn’t take us: my medical aid for myself and wife and child comes to over R3000 per month. The fees to send my child to school are R1300 per month. After car and insurance and rent, there is very little left.
I know I still do it because I really do care about patients. But if I’m forced to choose between my patients and my own family, what should I do? What would you do?
White Boi:
Thank you Manto (and Mpekkie!) ... thanks a lot!!! :bang:
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