19 months after taking the provincial Department of Health to the CCMA for unfair dismissal, a Cape doctor has been vindicated.
|||Cape Town - Exactly 19 months after taking the provincial Department of Health to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) for unfair dismissal, a city doctor - who last year exposed medical negligence problems at Eerste River Hospital - has been vindicated.
Dr Errol Visser, the former head of that hospital’s trauma unit, has maintained that he was targeted by department’s management after he raised questions of clinical governance at the hospital.
He alleged that the hospital was not only responsible for gross clinical negligence, but patient rights had also been violated with some patients made to sleep on the floor while those with infectious disease shared space with general patients.
He also claimed that patients continued to die of avoidable illnesses, while doctors and nurses felt trapped under the wrath of bully managers.
His allegations led to further threats to staff by senior managers and the department forcing both senior and mid-level managers to sign a “declaration of secrecy” to keep all information within the hospital’s confines.
Visser also claimed that:
* The department was outsourcing foreign-qualified doctors as locums even though these doctors were not allowed to work privately.
* Doctors failed to recognise and manage septic shock cases.
* Psychiatric patients were not being properly observed.
* The department rushed through an opening of a ward that was not fully equipped - a move that resulted in the sudden deaths of several patients. The ward allegedly did not have monitors, enough drips or nurse call systems.
Visser, who left the hospital in August 2011, has been fighting the department through the CCMA after his contract was terminated after the department deemed it “irregular” following the translation of certain posts into specialist posts in line with the Occupation Specific Dispensation.
The department said the doctor’s contract was irregular as he was employed by his brother, Timothy Visser, who was the hospital’s chief executive at the time.
In CCMA documents dated March 26, which the Cape Argus has in its possession, advocate Raynold Bracks - commissioner of the public health and social development sectoral bargaining council - rejected the department’s argument that Visser’s appointment was not in accordance with its policy.
Based on the department’s records, including those in its personnel salary systems, it was clear that Visser was an employee of the department.
“In addition, it is clear that his dismissal was both substantively and procedurally unfair,” said Bracks.
He ordered the department to pay Visser 12 months salary within 21 days of the arbitration award being given.
Visser said he felt vindicated.
“I feel pity for those who accept the status quo without questioning, for they will have to live with their decisions, which by omission of challenge, ratify the systems they know to be corrupt, and in which they work.”
sipokazi.fokazi@inl.co.za
Cape Argus