Health Staff Professionalism Major Complaint
Managing complaints about staff professionalism is one of the main challenges faced by the Health Ministry this year, says the Minister for Health and Medical Services.
Doctor Ifereimi Waqainabete said one of the many complaints included the staff being rude.
“We have a mechanism in place and an investigative process to deal with complaints,” Mr Waqainabete said.
“We need to understand where the complaint is coming from, what the complaint is about and what the answers to the complaint are.
“If it is about the areas of supporting the staff then we need to make sure there is a supporting mechanism. For example, if we get complaints about doctors and nurses sleeping in hospitals or centres during working hours, then we need to find out why.
“Is it because they are working too hard or what? So, what we are doing is trying to strengthen all areas around Human Resource.” Dr Waqainabete said the second challenge they faced was the procurement process for drugs, pharmaceutical and bio medical equipment.
“These are the areas, which is a challenge because globally we are buying on economic scale. For example, we buy one million tablets such as Panadol.
“So, in terms of economic scale, those buying at a bigger bulk spend more money hence, they have more power of buying then we have.” He said they were also trying to work towards the acquirement of the Lautoka and Ba hospitals under the public private partnership. “Our Prime Minister wants Fiji to move as a modern nation state. The platform has been laid by previous Health Ministers Jone Usamate and Rosy Akbar.
“What we have done this year, we took stock of things which has been done. When we sit down and reflect upon it, we have found out that we are far ahead now from where we were 10 years ago.
“The benefit of being a minister is that you can always look at it as a strategic focus and then ask the officials such as the permanent secretary, programme managers and secretaries, divisional medical officers to articulate and nationalise it.”