– to provide best healthcare service ever

By Wendella Davidson

THE St. Joseph’s Mercy Hospital is on a mission to upgrade patient care and other services it offers to the public. The hospital recently participated in the Guyana National Bureau of Standards National Quality Awards (NQA) 2019 for companies, and has been adjudged the winner of the Continuous Improvement Services Award.

The institution, which is located on Parade Street, Kingston, and has been a primary Private Hospital & Healthcare Services Provider in this country for some 74 years, is rated ISO-compliant, and is currently exploring the possibility of Guyana having its own nursing practitioners.

According to its Medical Director Dr. Ayesha Wilburg, such a human resource will be beneficial to the hospital’s forward-planning agenda.

Registered Nurse (RN) training is also done at the institution’ School of Nursing, and through a linkage with St. Joseph’s Mercy in the State of Connecticut in the USA, a trauma specialist visits annually to conduct training and assessment of the students and certification in Emergency Room (ER), Intensive Care Unit (ICU) nursing care, as well as Basic Life Support (BLS) and Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS) certification.
Just recently, a nurse was trained as an instructor ACLS in Connecticut, and is currently training others nurses, all of whom are certified by the Guyana Nursing Council to practise. To complement its medical team, Dr. Wilburg said the hospital has a trained psychologist and nutritionist on board.

Noting that a midwifery programme was recently started, the medical director said it is her desire to see ‘Mercy’ converted to a university hospital, where not only nurses, but doctors as well could be trained, similar to what obtains at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

CARING HANDS PACT
The institution also inked a collaboration agreement with the recently-launched Caring Hands Healthcare Inc., a private homecare service established by Dr. Rhonda Joseph, a dental surgeon and registered nurse, and Dr. Mahendra Carpen, a cardiologist, the objective of which is to bring relief to families who find it difficult to offer aftercare service to relatives who were hospitalised and have been discharged, Dr. Wilburg said during an exclusive interview with the Guyana Chronicle.

Dr. Carpen has a cardiology clinic at Mercy Hospital, where he offers services in echocardiogram, stress testing, holter monitors, ambulatory, blood pressure and sleep studies.

Recently, an information centre, which operates from 08:00 to 16:00hours, was established where persons visiting the institution for medical attention will have a hospital triage done by a nurse trained for such purposes. This entails the nurse taking the vital signs, blood pressure, pulse and blood sugar levels of the patient, and after being given a brief history of the ailment, he or she would then be advised on which doctor they should see, or whether they need to proceed to the emergency room, the institution’s medical director explained.

Meanwhile, a signature service at the institution is the promotion of breast feeding and the establishment of a breast feeding and baby-friendly corner, which is relaxing, and was branded by ANSA McAl. In addition, there are now changing tables for babies in all of the washrooms on every level, Dr. Wilburg pointed out.

With most of the specialty on board – Anesthesiology, Cardiology, Neurosurgery, Cardiothoracic surgery, Plastic surgery, Psychiatry, Internal Medicine, General Medicine, Endocrinologist, General surgery, Renal Vascular and Transplant surgery, Urology, Otolaryngologist (ENT), Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatric, Dermatology, Dentistry and Sonography – the services are conducted at 46 clinics by Residents and what’s called Doctors with Privilege who number about 80.

The latter are medical practitioners who use available office space at the institution, as they do not conduct clinics daily.

FULLY EQUIPPED

The hospital is fully equipped, and provides 24-hour services to both in and out-patients. It also has a unique feature to the availability of a specialist, with the use of a monthly on-call duty schedule, and a 24-hour access to its two operating theatres.

The emergency room is designed with a triage area; an area for doctors’ interview and emergency beds, while there is easy access to the 24-hour services such as the x-ray department, ultrasound, computed tomography(CT) scans and the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) department.

Additionally, all of the doctors who are practising at the hospital are certified by the Medical Council of Guyana, with a monthly Continued Medical Examination (CME) conferences being done at the hospital, whereby each attending doctor is given one CME credit which amounts to 12 CME credits required by the medical council for registration.