Pelonomi Hospital, Bloemfontein
In the face of serious shortages of medical professionals, the nurses at Pelonomi Hospital in Bloemfontein put on a brave face. “We must do our best and pray to God to help us, so that nothing ever happens to patients because of staff shortages,” says chief professional nurse Dipuo Konote. “We do our utmost best.”
Senior professional nurse Margret Mini agrees. “Shortages are a big problem, we are really praying that we don’t find any of our colleagues in trouble,” says Mini. “I am telling you, I am worried.”
With a 75% vacancy rate for professional nurse posts and a 63% vacancy rate for senior professional nurses, these Pelonomi nurses have reason to be concerned.
Dr Martiens Schoon, head of clinical services at Pelonomi, says they are facing critical vacancy levels: “Those that are recruited come into a hostile environment and they don’t last long.” Schoon says a recent study conducted by a psychologist showed that up to 60% of the hospital’s medical professionals were suffering from burnout.
“Burnout is a psychological personality disorder that blunts the nurses’ emotions and a non-caring attitude emerges, especially in areas where they are under extreme pressure,” says Schoon.
“When somebody does something wrong, they get on to her like all hell. They ask, ‘Why did you not do A, B and C?’ They don’t ask whether it was physically possible to do A, B and C,’ says Mini. “It’s always, ‘Sister you failed to do this. Sister you failed to do that.’ But how can I do it all?”
Another nurse at Pelonomi, who asked not to be named, agreed that burnout was a massive problem at the hospital. Nurse Mmadibuseng Lepheane says there are often 60 patients in a ward being looked after by just two nurses, sometimes assisted by an additional nurse who is moonlighting. “We don’t have time to monitor critically ill patients.”
As well as being short of hands, Lepheane says the staff also have to deal with shortages of medicine and cleaning materials.
With a huge number of nurses having left to work abroad, there are simply too few nurses to go around.
A new state-of-the-art trauma centre was opened recently at Pelonomi but, although it advertised for 65 professional nurses, only five applications were received. “We have to start headhunting now,” says Elize Esterhuizen, principal specialist for the emergency accident unit.
Schoon says the downgrading of Pelonomi from a tertiary hospital to a regional hospital has created serious funding issues, because the hospital still maintains four tertiary units. “For this year they gave us R17million for tertiary services from the tertiary services grant, but it costs R80million to run these services.” Schoon says Pelonomi has been overspending by between R18million and R20million for the past five years.
Add to this the additional pressures of the HIV/Aids epidemic and a failing primary healthcare service, and it is small wonder that Pelonomi is struggling to retain medical professionals.
“There are no doctors and nurses out in the periphery and so our periphery hospitals are collapsing one after the other and the work flows over to us,” says Schoon.