Disgruntled patients are fed up with appalling service and waiting times of up to 12 hours at a Cape Town clinic.
|||Cape Town - Since childhood, Nabeelah Lodewyk, 45, has depended on the Hanover Park community health centre for her health care needs.
A few years ago, after she was diagnosed with debilitating fibrosis – inflammation of fibrous tissue characterised by widespread muscle and joint aches – she started using the clinic more regularly.
“It all started well – I would be in and out of the clinic within three to four hours, but gradually the service got poorer. The clinic became overcrowded and nurses increasingly became hostile towards patients,” she said.
Now, after 40 years of using the clinic, Lodewyk has given up.
The medication might have been free, but staff attitudes and poor service have resulted in her avoiding the clinic since last August, when she waited for almost 12 hours one day without being helped.
“I couldn’t take it any more… when I complained to a nurse that I hadn’t been served, she angrily told me that I’m not the only one and that the reason for my panic was that I wanted to go home and vreet (eat) to break my fast as it was Ramadaan.
“I was so hurt by her attitude… I felt so humiliated that I walked out of that clinic and have never set my foot in there again. I’m still sick and sometimes get so much pain that I can’t get out of bed, but I’d rather go through that and die at home than to be treated like a nobody seeking free health services,” she said.
Lodewyk, who now gets her chronic medication from a local pharmacy through her brother, is not the only one unhappy about services at the clinic.
Gadija Solomons, 74, often has to queue on benches for up 12 hours.
“I know of patients who have their medication collected on their behalf, but I choose to come on my own so that I can get to walk. I am diabetic and I try to keep active by walking. I also like to come on my own so that I can discuss the side effects of my medication with nurses,” she said
Solomons says sitting on a hard bench for 12 hours at a time is dreadful.
Zainoenisa Muller has also had problems. She and a group of women stood outside the clinic, angrily discussing the poor service.
Muller said: “I joined the queue at 7am to see a district surgeon at 7.30am, but then we were told he would only be here at 11am. There are so many of us who have the 7.30am appointment. When I asked a nurse how we can all be seen at the same time, seeing that they have booked so many of us for 7.30am, she just lashed out at me.”
Lorraine Adams, 63, who took her granddaughter to the clinic last Friday just before noon after she complained about a severe pain in the neck, claimed patients were not seen for more than three hours as nurses were celebrating “Nurses’ Day”.
“After waiting there for nearly four hours, people became restless and asked the facility manager why we were not being seen. It is only after that that a few nurses were called out of the function, but it was too late to be seen by doctors who were now packing their bags preparing to go home. I left the clinic at 10pm because nurses were having a party while we waited,” she said.
While staff attitudes and long queues irked patients the most, others complained of interrupted supply of chronic medication, general filthiness at the clinic, and ill treatment of elderly patients, who sometimes waited even longer than 12 hours.
But despite their unhappiness, patients claim there is no effective complaints system. No one seemed to pay attention to the suggestions box, while a clinic committee, which normally intervened on patients’ behalf, was being sidelined by the clinic management, they said.
None of the patients knew about the new SMS complaints initiative launched by Health MEC Theuns Botha last year, which allows patients to lodge their gripes by phone or SMS by sending “help” to 31022.
Elizabeth Bantom, chairwoman of the Hanover Park Health Forum, confirmed that the clinic committee was “toothless” and for almost a year it had been “sidelined”, making it ineffective. She said they had written letters to the provincial department of health to complain about the clinic’s “bad management style”, but their call fell on deaf ears.
“No one has even bothered to respond. We are left to our own devices while the community is suffering. These people have no one way of raising complaints except through local structures, but if you don’t have that who will know of their grievances?”
The Western Cape Health Department’s response:
For the past week people older than 70 and disabled patients in Hanover Park have been able to get their medication delivered to their homes, said Faiza Steyn, spokeswoman for the Western Cape Health Department.
She told the Cape Argus the community had been informed. The system reduced waiting times at the Hanover Park Community Health Centre. “In addition, appointment times for chronic patients have been implemented and are working well.”
Steyn was responding to complaints by patients who spoke to the Cape Argus at the centre on Monday.
Referring to reports of poor staff attitudes, Steyn said: “This gets addressed as it gets picked up. Unless specifics are provided regarding unit/individual staff member and incidence, only then can these issues be investigated and dealt with accordingly.”
She said on Nurses’ Day it had been arranged for doctors “to attend to the few patients who were waiting”. These were mainly walk-in patients without appointments.
Regarding complaints that some people waited up to 12 hours to go through the centre, Steyn said: “Pease provide specific details of those patients who waited so long, so that a folder audit can be done and the matter be clarified.” People over 80, disabled patients, pregnant women, and babies of a year or under had priority at the pharmacy. “All elderly patients are attended to immediately.”
sipokazi.fokazi@inl.co.za
Cape Argus