Under strain: Patients needing urgent medical attention only to be greeted by a waiting room full of others who also need urgent care. — Photo taken from Nayli Majid’s tweet
PETALING JAYA: “Sometimes it is like a warzone”.
That is how healthcare workers describe their working condition at some public healthcare facilities.
Long hours of waiting, a lack of beds, manpower shortage and overstretched resources has led to many urging the government to act quickly to save the situation.
Dr Timothy Cheng, an orthopaedic surgeon in Hospital Duchess of Kent, Sandakan, painted a dire picture.
In a tweet to Health Minister Dr Zaliha Mustafa and Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, he said the issues of human resource, facility failure and others are only the tip of the iceberg.
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“Lab reagents are running out, antibiotic supplies are low, clinics are running out of oral rehydration salts, multiple doctor-patient consultations are done in the same room,” he said.
“I have personally carried a patient down the stairs when lifts broke down in a hospital. In another hospital, operating theatre lights fell from the ceiling onto a doctor,” he added.
“Some emergency wards have patients so close to each other that there is no space even for the emergency trolley,” he added.
He claimed that the contract system, which was implemented in 2016, has resulted in more good doctors leaving for abroad.
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“I still try to persuade them to stay but it is getting harder,” he said.
A medical officer at a hospital in the Klang Valley called the healthcare system a “sinking ship” with medical workers struggling to attend to the high number of patients.
“The healthcare system itself is in a code triage – a disaster – of sorts. We are short of beds and sometimes patients have to wait for hours and even days. There is only so much that can be done at an emergency department. When patients are in pain, the healthcare workers have to bear the brunt of their agony,” she said.
“We are often scolded by patients and their next of kin. But this is beyond us. The healthcare system can no longer take the patient load,” she added.
She acknowledged that the extremely long wait hours may cause the patients’ conditions to deteriorate. In some cases, lives could be at stake.
“We do not have enough beds and manpower. There is no point having facilities without enough manpower,” she said.
Another emergency department head at a hospital said the wait at the emergency department could be up to eight hours as it was severely understaffed, with more contract medical officers quitting.
“The green zone has become busy with the increasing number of patients.
“Sometimes there are only two doctors managing green zone cases which is not enough,” he said, adding that it was not easy to divert green zone or non-critical cases to health clinics as most of them do not operate beyond 5pm.
“Some patients come to hospital by public transport, we cannot tell them to leave,” he said.
He suggested that medical officers and health workers be allowed to double up as locum or be given after-hours pay to ensure enough manpower at emergency departments.
The pharmacy department is also understaffed causing longer wait hours.
A pharmacist said there are three doctors and four medical assistants at his health clinic along with two pharmacists and one pharmacy assistant.
“When one of the pharmacists is off or on emergency leave, there won’t be any replacement but we still try to make sure the patient is served within 30 minutes.
“Each day, we have almost 140 patients, sometime more,” he said.
“Two pharmacists have to issue queue numbers, do screening, transcribing, printing labels, filling medication, labelling and dispensing. It takes time because patients must get the right medication,” he said.
Checks at emergency departments at hospitals at the Klang Valley and Penang also showed long queues.
Recently, Hospital Tengku Ampuan Rahimah in Klang had to shut down its emergency department green zone for a few hours due to patient overload.
Meanwhile, the son of a patient who died after heart attack had alleged that his father had to wait for close to 30 hours for a bed at the Serdang Hospital. This, he said, led to the older man’s death.
Selangor Health Department director Datuk Dr Sha’ari Ngadiman, however, replied that hospital had done its best for the patient.
