NURSES attached to the Linden Hospital Complex (LHC), did not follow through with plans to participate in a strike, following a meeting that was held between management and the Ministry of Public Health Officials, on Tuesday.
This newspaper was told that the nurses participated in about three hours of sit-in earlier in the week. While Administrative Manager, Michelle Bollers, refused to divulge details of the meeting, the Guyana Chronicle was reliably informed that amicable solutions were brought to the fore in relation to nurses’ requests.
These include a comprehensive package that will cover all the loose ends relative to their general duty, but more particularly to them having to travel with patients to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), or in cases from the Kwakwani Hospital to Linden. These requests were heightened following the death of their colleague, Eon Reddock, last Saturday, following a fatal accident, after he transferred a patient to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation.
The nurses are calling for risk allowance to be incorporated in the package as well as the insurance of the ambulances. These calls were supported by the Industrial Relations Officer of the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU), Maurice Butters. “There is no insurance to cover them. If anything happens to them, they are on their own. We have been calling for this a long time and it is sad that we have to wait until somebody dies to run around the place and start making promises,” Butters stressed.
The nurses are also calling for the transfer of patients to be better evaluated, since in many cases, when they reach to GPHC, doctors would say that there was no need to transfer the patient. In the case of the patient that Reddock was transferring, the nurses related that there was not an urgent need to transfer the patient and the transfer could have been done since earlier in the day, thus avoiding the accident.
“Since early in the morning before my shift end, they talking about transferring the patient and they dilly-dally and wait until night to do the transfer. We are saying there was no need to transfer in the first place and even if, it could have been done in the day, when it was safer. If that was done, Reddock could have been alive today,” the nurse said under anonymity.
Butters, who is also a Director on the LHC Board, is calling for a better policy or system for transfer. Nurses are calling for transfers to be done during the day except in cases of emergency at nights. They are also calling for critical units with specialists to be established at the Regional Hospitals.
At LHC systems are being implemented to establish critical units such as a CT scanning unit and a dialysis unit. The rooms have already been set up and very soon these services are expected to be rolled out. When there is a genuine case of emergency and patients have to be transferred, nurses are calling for a more spacious ambulance to be made available for the transferal. The present ones, they claim, are uncomfortable and unsafe.
Chairman of the Regional Health Committee, Gordon Calendar, said he will be engaging the nurses on Thursday on the issue, in an effort to see how best the RDC can render assistance. The ambulance attendant Shoma Douglas who was involved in the accident, underwent a successful surgery on Wednesday, at GPHC. Ambulance driver Ranetse Paul has been discharged from the hospital and is recovering at home. Nurse Eon Reddock will be buried on Sunday, November, 10th.
