graduation ceremony for Chilonga and Kasama Schools of Nursing and
Midwives which was held at Chilonga Mission School of Nursing.A total
of 94 nurses graduated.
The Zambia Medical Association says flamboyant buildings cannot treat patients in the absence of about 500 experienced nurses recently fired by government.
ZMA president Aaron Mujajati said the dismissal of experienced nurses from major hospitals has affected operations and the quality of healthcare service for the patients.
Dr Mujajati said the health sector thrived on expertise and wondered how the new recruits said to have replaced the dismissed staff would work without the necessary supervision.
The ZMA revealed that healthcare service had remained suboptimal, more so in the absence of trained health practitioner to see that quality of services in public health institutions was far from ideal.
“All medical fields thrive on apprenticeship for safety of patients as one of the major reasons. So who is showing these new nurses the ropes after the dismissal of the mentors? Need we say more?” he questioned.
He explained that while other nations were carrying out mass recruitment of health personnel, the Zambian government seemed to have the luxury of dismissing the nurses without consideration of the patients.
He said although they welcomed the infrastructure development taking place in the health sector, including at the largest health institution in the country, University Teaching Hospital (UTH), there was very little being done to address the question of service delivery.
“Currently if you take UTH for instance only one nurse takes care of over 60 patients in the wards at night and on top of that some of them are new and inexperienced.
“A newly graduated nurse needs to work under supervision for at least 18 months and in some cases three years before they can be left to work alone,” he said.
Dr Mujajati said the doctors were concerned with the state of affairs after the dismissal of the nurses and questioned how long the recovery period could take at the expense of the patients.
He charged that the national population was increasing without any corresponding rise in resources or change of strategy to redress the growing demand of healthcare services, adding that there was a general shortage of health care personnel globally.
“We have stated before that the strike action by the nurses was not right but we still maintain that dismissing them was not the correct way to proceed for a number of reasons, but you cannot simply fire experienced nurses and replace them with newly graduated ones and assume all is well.
“No health worker is happy to nurse a patient on the floor or to be told every so often that one thing or the other is out of stock and you have to hopelessly watch you patient deteriorate. At which point should these issues attract the due attention of those who make the real difference?” he said.
He said as a nation, Zambia had come a long way in the 49 years of independence and should already be at a certain level other than the desire shown to improve the infrastructure.
“Funding to a number of public hospitals is behind by four or more months. Would these issues have a different perspective if our leaders or their close relatives were attended in the same environment as the patients from Kanyama?
“All is not well and we should not as a people and nation deceive ourselves. Is the life of a poor Zambian who has no real alternatives to public hospital services worth saving? We believe that is what it all comes down to,” Dr Mujajati said.
As a health worker, never shall PF have my vote again.
PF have already decampaigned themselves. I think they still dont believe that they are unpopular. Wait for 2016.
PF government is very useless, these guys lack critical thinking, pure Kaponya government. How do you fire nurses?
The lives of patients is at a great risk under the care of those unexperienced nurses from college…..
I regret voting for PF, they will never get my vote, i’m learning lessons the hard way.
The appropriate action form an official of Zambia Medical Association would have been to demand that more experienced nurses be transferred from lower level health centers to augment the remaining experience.
It seems contradictory to concur that a strike was illegal but then refuse to accept what the law and rules provides in such circumstances.Dr.Mujajati,what your nurses involved themselves in was Gross Indiscipline.The punishment for that is punitive and exemplary.Whether you are a doctor,a president,a general etc.,the message is clear:Never involve yourself in disorderly behavior that shows a bad example to others and can lead to the breakdown of the organization/social order
From this comment,I hope that you will grasp that Government action looks beyond 500 experienced nurses
God bless the doctor for speaking out for the poor. The man in state house is evil .
The truth is that even before the nurses were fired, the service provided at those dilapitaed buildings at UTH was already bad. The staff-the Doctors and Nurses at UTH are very rude and don’t provide any customer centred services. The hospital is dirty, many staff indisciplined and highly incompetent. Lab staff are always losing patient results, sick patients are kept in congested lines, wheel chairs are a luxury, wheelchairs are made from makeshift plastic chairs and the metallic ones are not even fit to use to transport animals. Staff ask relatives to act as couriers between Lab, wards, radiology services etc.These are the issues the ZMA needs to address, a holistic approach to their own poor management of the overall services at UTH. Come up with a full analysis & turn around…
That is a retard statement Mr Aaron Mujajati for someone
holding such an office.
Hit the nail on the head.
Thanks
What really goes on in your head you proconsol africanas?
last time I checked, this lil twat called Mushota was trying to get a train from Dundee to Stonehaven just to go and rescue Nick who apparently had run out of fuel
whats wrong with this *** just today i took my daughter to the clinic and i was given a prescription to go buy even panadol instead and u say things are ok………foooolish
Good call from the ZMA. Such intervention from professionals is welcome, because government seem not to heed to advice put across by politicians
This guy is laughable. he is telling the half truth am a doc and this is about the best nosense have head today..anyway good for him.
Explain how this is nonsense
Are you doctor in Zambia? or just a blogger pa city market?
Medical delivery has greatly improved over the last number of years .is bee a consituons improvement from the time of Late mwanawasa to now. they are pitfalls but overal health care has improved with the lead time for medicines also reducing
liar……………what has improved when we still being given prescriptions to go buy paracetamol? the problem with PF cadres is they don’t think using their heads but stomach regardless of how educated they might be
which hospital did you go to? I can follow that up for you. if that happened then thats a cause for concern.
Actually it’s you who has written NONSENSE becoz am a medical student and the situation at UTH is even worse than Dr. Mujajati has described. Maybe you are doctor KWIMBAKATI KUSANSHA NA LESA from LUAPULA operating under a tree.
WHO DOENST KNOW THAT MUJAJATI IS A UPND CADRE WHO SPEAKS TO CHAMPION THE HIDDEN AGENDA OF DE-CAMPAIGNING THE CURRENT GOVERNMENT? THE GOVERNMWENT SHOULD BE CAREFUL WITH THIS DOCTOR WHO SPEAKS AS A PROFFESSIONAL YET BUSY TALKING ON THE UPND PLATFORM AT UTH
That is the problem with these of cadres very dull. Address the issues raised by the Doc!
Do not sink your head in the sand just because you dislike UPND. Our medical facilities are in crisis to say the least..
Bwana Phiri. Dont play with people’s lives unless your relatives are all well todo and can afford Morning Side Clinic in South Africa.
Mwe ba Phiri so u are in support of this issue people are dying in the hospitals just
because u are pf and not sick. This is serious.
you are certainly right
Lets make chanda chimbas commentaries the budget and compare with the actual, l see very narrow variances
I see you are an accountant. Variance Analysis. Planning Variance and Operational Variance. Market or Systemetic Risk v Company Risk. I relish those days doing the dreaded Management accounting paper at Level II of ACCA and then you would be met by another hurdle; Financial Managementin Level III to wrestle with Modigliani and Miller. And add to the London cold on those Tubes going to the northern suburbs!
History
It is the truth that he said,bangwele.Do you want Pf to continue messing up?Mwanya naka Mushota
Did the nurses put the patients in consideration when they were campaigning for higher? I don’t know whom this question belongs to. Need we remind that people died during that period? No because the man is the doc and about mentors…..these newbies did their attachments at big hospitals so i would like to advise the useless doctor to shut up before he gets his smart ass into problems.
I think that boat has sailed, and it was brought about by PF’s pronouncements being inconsistent to there actions. The minister said the government will look into their plight and didn’t do anything. Furthermore nurses are not treating animals here, its human beings so you expect a longer period of supervision. A longer period is justifiable.
@Sense Pump, and yo solution to that is allowing more deaths by dismissing them? Why did u cause the situation as government in the first place?
Visit UTH and see if this Hippocratic Oath man is lying PF style or veritus (truthful), Catholic bishops style.
Let me get this straight….
Where all the Nurses fired?
What about the ones who have remained,… Can’t they do the training?!
Truth be told, even before the firing, the Health System in Zambia has been bad for a very long time!
A mate of mine was admitted in a female ward. Alongside many women. Another guy i know was told to share a bed with someone. Mudala, nurses aren’t the only problems in these Hospitals…
@hedge- a doc eh! u r NOT!
what has occurred in the recent 2 yrs yo warrant applause?
maybe a doc in edu sciences.
ways happening is more like getting a newly licenced, inexperienced driver to drive a loaded 60 seater bus- long haul.
Dr Mujajati speaks on behalf of ZMA, to which med docs belong. So stop pretending 2 be 1. u risk plunging the honorable progression into disrepute!
God bless us all.
I believe the so called “SENSE PUMP” suffers from hydrocephalus, the brain is super saturated with water making him to think very shallow. Can it be reason enough for poor patients to continue dying because some of them died during the strike! Go to UTH and visit labour ward or theater, It will take Zambia more than five years to go back to the standard of health care that was there before firing of experienced nurses. South Africa has benefited from Zambia’s lose as some of those nurses have been employed there,
On this one whether you like it or not PF has lost out. Surely even the nurses employed to replace their fired counter parts are not happy. They may have accepted to take the jobs just because of high levels of unemployment. But they too know that they are at risk with the current government should they press for good conditions of services. Five hundred nurses is not simple thing just to brush aside. It has a multiplier effect. This Doc although I do not know him has a point. Ignore him at your own peril.
I personally know Dr. Aaron Mujajati. He is a level headed man, hardworking and he is a standing Christian. What he is saying is the truth. I shudder at the thought of getting sick and being admitted to UHT or having a relative being admitted there. May God deliver Zambia.
it was wrong for the nurses to go on strike but firing them was the biggest mistake, this decision shud hav been made with a lot of consultations.moreover nurses are mostly trained by tax payer money
School them, that two wrongs don’t make a right.
hedge u are not a doc and u will never be one in your lifetime!
Now coming to the matter, yes the nurses went on an illegal strike riscking patients lives. But do we fire them to loose more patients??… NO SIR!!!. there is a btter way and not firing them. after all these same people in power fly to SA even for a simple flu. my heart bleeds for the poor zambian!
its so true Doc..the chaps have failed us..we need our nurses back!!
Well the doc is just expressing his views,discipline should be the altimate,while most of you will say the Govt is being insensitive you should understand what it means to be an essential worker,it means sacrifice.The politicians even stopped visiting nurses with envelops there is now some disipline…
The truth is that even before the nurses were fired, the service provided at those dilapitaed buildings at UTH was already bad. The staff-the Doctors and Nurses at UTH are very rude and don’t provide any customer centred services. The buildings are dirty, many of the staff indisplicned and highly incompetent. Lab staff are always losing patient results, sick patients are kept in congested lines, wheel chairs are a luxury wheelchairs are made from makeshift plastic chairs and the metallic ones are not even fit to use to transport animals. Staff ask patients to act as couriers between Lab, wards, radiology services etc.These are the issues the ZMA should be addressing, a holistic approach to their own poor management of the overall services at UTH. Come up with a full turn around strategy!
Good point you have raised but the government has a duty to ensure that the institution is fullly funded. There is so much that we need to do as a nation. My hear bleeds at the poor service delivery across so many disciplines whether it be health, education, agriculture etc. I think we need to start afresh from the ground – up. What we need to do is to start enculcating in the children patriotism. We need to start believing in Zambia again. People have lost faith in our beloved Zambia. We need to get back to being Zambians that value our and nation and offer the best we can give. At the moment, people are doing things for themselves. We are not doing things to serve but to gain and this has plunged our nation into this mess that it is. Politicians starte it and it has spread like a cancer.
good point, one needs to dissect and name each problem specifically, come up with methods to solve it. that’s how you overcome these huge pathetic institutions that are not efficient. Conduct ongoing audits to see how your doing in each area. So for example take the porters, give them uniforms so they are identified, appoint managers over them , provide pagers to monitor them etc. Why are hotels ,banks and restaurants so efficient with the same Zambians? Cause room for rubbish is not there, you pull your weight or loose your job.
Unfortunately intimidation tactics and firing people will not work in longrun. Maybee what will work is giving them what they want, higher salaries and allowances, shorter hours, smaller patient to nurse ratio , personal to holder cars, some decent accommodation etc. Just give them what they want, we are in 21st century please. I mean current conditions are worse than being a soldier in the Vietnam war or medieval Europe, they catch TB in those wards , hepatitis etc and die , no protection no compensation.
Sata is the opposite of the Messiah, while the Messiah’s mission is to deliver people from the jaws of death and hell, his is to remove them paradise back the jaws of death and subsequently death. His father is the father of all lies and death.
subsequently hell
mujajati is simply missing the nurses he used chop who he shared with HH. ilyashi lya dancing queens ba nurse should be water under the bridge by now imwe mujajati. i know nurses are so in good in that even HH put up the same fight for them.
Flamboyant nurses can’t treat patients in the absence of discipline.
It’s so disheartening to see how simplistic individuals can be. Doctors, nurses and porters at UTH are rude because Zambians are naturally very rude people. Who says restaurants, banks and the private sector is performing better?? If that’s what you think then you re mistaken. How many times have I been to a bank? name it ZANACO, Barclays or standard bank and all I get is these rude characters. People like to point fingers at health workers and forget that they behave the same way; probably worse off. Health workers are not angels; they are human beings that hail from the same Zambian communities and their behavior reflects the true Zambian behavior. All Zambians need to learn to show care and love for each other. Treat health care workers well when they need services from you, then…