We are not to blame for poor service - nurses

In Summary

Complaint. Health workers say they are subjected to poor working conditions, little pay and heavy workload.

MBARARA. Nurses have said they are not to blame for poor health service delivery as they are being portrayed.
There are allegations that some nurses are rude towards patients and neglect duty. The nurses instead said blame for poor services should lay squarely on government and citizens.
While electing new leaders for Uganda Nurses and Midwives Union (UNMU), western region in Mbarara District last Thursday, the health workers said they are subjected to poor working conditions, little pay and heavy workload.

Ms Florence Rwabahima, the UNMU national treasurer, said healthcare does not belong to nurses and midwives only, it starts from home. She said if a household does not have a sense of proper health, then a nurse or midwife may fail.
“For instance if there is a family where they are delivering (babies) every year, do you take that as a healthy family, they will have many children who they will fail to look after. If a community is helped to understand that health is made at home not at health facility it means I will get patients I can adequately attend to,” she said.
Ms Rwabahima said they are overworked, adding that World Health Organisation recommends one midwife to five mothers and one nurse to 10 patients.

She said community leaders are quick to blame midwives and nurses without looking at the challenges they face.
“If they are reporting that the midwives and nurses are bad, have they walked to a health facility to find out why, we are not that bad, it is external factors which contribute to that,” she said.
Rwabahima added: “Equipment are not there, the environment she is working in is one room with no chair, blood pressure machines are not there, drugs even may be there when they are brought expired from National Medical Stores (NMS). It is evidenced and it’s true, you go to district stores, you will find drugs which are expired yet they have just arrived from NMS just within one week, two weeks.”

Mr Masereka Zakayo, the UNMU national secretary for education, research and ethics, appealed to government and other international bodies to come to the rescue of health workers, more particularly the nurses and midwives who are at the frontline of preventing and treating disease by ensuring that they have protective gears, adequate salary and housing.
Ms Joyce Lucy Atim, the UNMU national general secretary, advised nurses and midwives to stick to their ethical code of practice and communicate well to the patients.

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