THE Seventh annual general conference of Medical Superintendents has opened in Accra with a call on members to ensure best practices in the management of hospitals in the country, especially during national disasters.
The best practices required of medical superintendents include the skills to deal with emergencies, promptness to serve, as well as their attitude towards patients and their relatives.
The Deputy Director of Quality Assurance of the Ministry of Health, Dr Cynthia Bannerman, explained that more often relatives of patients were maltreated by not giving them the needed attention during visits to hospitals.
She explained that the practice was against international standards, which required that hospital staff show compassion and love towards patients and their relatives, since that was part of quality care.
She noted that international standards required that in time of disasters and emergencies, relatives were assembled in one room at the hospital and updated on the condition of their relatives on admission by hospital authorities periodically to allay their anxiety.
Speaking on the theme “Disasters Here, Disasters There, How Prepared Are We? Dr Bannerman said linkages among health facilities had to be strengthened to ensure that patients could be referred from one facility to another without much delay and loss of life.
For his part, the General Secretary of the Medical Superintendents Group, Dr Kofi G. Normanyo, said there had been floods in the north, south and even in Accra and seismologists had warned of an imminent earthquake.
He said in all these situations, there was the need to plan ahead just in case an event with the scale of a disaster occurred.
Dr Normanyo said the Ghana Medical Superintendents, numbering more than 300, would converge in Tamale in the first week of October to adopt strategies and draw plans to deal with disasters whenever they occurred in the country.
No comments:
Post a Comment