The subject of staff in hospitals remains a burning issue. Lack of staff, staff members affected by Covid, Vacation Leaves cancelled, conversion of the ENT Hospital into a Resuscitation and Intensive Care Centre that can accommodate 120 critical cases against the number of qualified staff that will be able to provide this type of high care service! All these situations could cripple the hospital service according to those concerned… Let’s go.
ENT – ICU and Rehabilitation Centre
ENT Hospital in Vacoas currently has 50 patients suffering from a severe form of Covid 19. These admissions are cases transferred from home isolation and regional hospitals where the demand for oxygen has increased considerably. “The ENT Hospital currently uses liquid oxygen which is a method that allows us to provide patients with their adequate oxygen needs but we have made provision for other methods of oxygen” said Dr Sok Appadu, the Director of ENT. He added that “the Treatment Centre was converted on Wednesday 17th November into a resuscitation and intensive care centre.” ENT Hospital will now be able to accommodate 120 serious patients.
120 additional beds that require specialised staff
This is very good news for patient management, but it is of greater concern to the Nurses Union, which is already denouncing the cruel lack of staff in hospitals, which makes patient care unmanageable. Nasser Essa does not hide his worry. “Won’t this conversion paralyse the services even more? Will the ENT Hospital have enough Ventilators for these 120 beds? For a normal ward, the ratio is 1 nurse for 7 patients, in what we categorise as High Care, i.e. severe cases like at ENT and the various Covid Wards, the ratio is 1 nurse for 3 patients and in the ICU department, it is 1 nurse for 1 patient. Here, Dr Subiraj Sok Appadu is talking about Resuscitation and ICU. To my knowledge, we have only a small handful of nurses who are really trained for Resuscitation and to technically operate a Ventilator well. Will there be enough staff per Ventilator? If the ministry is going to use regional hospitals, how will these intensive care units function in this striking period of Covid 19?” says the president of the Nurses’ Union. “We are doing a feasibility study on this new ENT Hospital conversion project which we have been made aware of at the same time as the public,” laments Nasser Essa.
Vacation Leaves cancelled
Another major concern of this Nurses’ Union is the cancellation of Vacation Leaves. Mrs. D. Allagapen, Senior Chief Executive (SCE) of the Ministry of Health, issued an emergency statement on Tuesday 16th November, urgently calling on the staff currently on leave to return to work as soon as possible. This decision stems from two reasons which are explained in the communiqué, namely the fight against the pandemic and the demands of the service. This decision is supported by paragraph 4.9.11 (2) of the Human Resource Management Manual (2011), which also provides for the reimbursement of staff for their unused leave days. But the downside, according to Nasser Essa, is “what if the staff has already reached their refund limit? There are different grades of nurses. We need to look into this further. We will come forward with more results,” he says.
However, this communiqué exempts cases such as childbirth, surgery, funerals and weddings, among others.
More grievances for the Nurses Union
These new developments add to the grievances and appeals of the Nurses’ Union, which reproaches the Ministry of Health for a lack of attention and consideration towards hospital staff, who are in total burnout. “We are still waiting for a final version of a roster itself. Currently, we are working on test schedules. The staff are exhausted, they can’t take it anymore. Duty is the only reason why they are here. This has led to a high contamination rate of our Front Liners. The Ministry needs to employ more staff to better manage the contaminated Mauritian population! We are facing a global problem where the lack of hospital staff is decried worldwide, especially in this period of crisis. In Mauritius, this cruel shortage has been decried since 2018, even before Covid 19 hit us hard,” concludes Nasser Essa.
