Health workers complain of unfairness in offering training opportunities to favourites
Health workers nationwide have complained bitterly about the same-faces-training syndrome in health facilities, while the country is striving hard to achieve universal health coverage through its National Healthcare Quality Strategy.
Mr Anthony Sopaal, a Training Manager, Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association, said most at times, senior workers and obviously, the favourites of high officials in hospitals and health centres were the ones given the opportunity to go for training and re-training on same topics and areas at hotels and other facilities within and outside the country.
“All the time, same people are taken for trainings and if staff are demotivated by this and not given the required capacity building, they will not perform,” he added.
He said it was high time Junior staff and different faces within the senior staff were given equal opportunities to undergo training, to help them acquire enhanced knowledge for quality healthcare delivery.
He made the assertion during a two-day stakeholder engagement on the National healthcare Quality held in Accra.
The forum sought to assess the level of the National Healthcare Quality Strategy within the Ministry and across its agencies, showcase quality innovations by the agencies, serve as an avenue to recognise the efforts of providers and promote the use of evidence for decision making, as part of the review process on the NHQS.
Mr Albert Kofi Acquah, a Quality Assurance Manager and Physiotherapist, Cape Coast Teaching Hospital, also bemoaned the no-bed syndrome that unfortunately sometimes triggered the condition of patients and worsened their complications.
He appealed that a ‘Bed Manager’ was appointed for all health facilities nationwide to ensure that beds were always available for emergency cases.
Dr Mary Eyram Ashinyo, Deputy Director, Quality Assurance, Ghana Health Service, responding to the complaints of no-bed syndrome said: “I don’t feel anything when a patient complains of no-bed syndrome. I am actually happy because it gives us reasons to investigate. The complaints we’ve been having are not new, but the problem is the resources to do the implementation.”
She explained that the usual was that emergency units were often congested, and lacked beds while wards had empty beds with some in a poor state.
She entreated health facilities to build the capacity of frontline workers to make arrangements to ensure that emergency units always had empty beds for new cases.
Source: GNA