Shortage of nurses raises blood pressure
January 16, 2004 Edition -1
Solly Maphumulo
A nurse has been forced to run a busy clinic by herself for two weeks because her three colleagues were on leave.
This is what The Star found when we visited the Lenasia South clinic on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The clinic has four nurses. Two were on annual leave and a third on sick leave.
Frustrated patients were turned away from the clinic because of staff shortages and those needing urgent attention stood for hours in hot sun waiting for the nurse to help them.
The queue moved at a snail's pace. Many hot and angry patients finally gave up and went home - but not before knocking at the nurse's door, shouting insults and demanding that she attend to them.
Panicked clinic employees ran into their rooms and closed their doors to avoid the angry crowd.
"This is disgusting. We have been here for two days and no one is willing to assist," said one patient.
An angry Mervin Pillay said he had come to the clinic so that his daughter could be vaccinated.
"I have taken two days off work. My daughter cannot be enrolled in school before she has the vaccine. I don't know what to tell her anymore. All she wants is to go to school and they won't enroll her until she has been vaccinated," Pillay said.
Elizabeth Mahabane had queued for two days so that nurses could check on her sick baby. On Monday she was turned away. She returned early on Tuesday. By the afternoon her patience had worn thin and her baby's condition had deteriorated. She decided to walk home.
City of Johannesburg spokes-person Mbangwa Xaba admitted that there was a shortage of staff. He said five nurses would be distributed to each of the 12 clinics in the area to ease the backlogs.
"On average, two to three nursing sisters attend to over 70 patients daily at each clinic," Xaba said.
"Consequently, the city has experienced high staff turnover."
He said it was difficult to recruit people to work in these clinics because they were in remote areas.
Xaba added that nurses were also being lured into lucrative employment opportunities abroad.
