Guy’s Hill fights challenges to serve patients
DESPITE THE many challenges being experienced, the Guy’s Hill Health Centre, strategically located in the centre of the St Catherine community, has been serving residents of three parishes since its inception.
The health centre was built in 1959 as a Type 2 facility to deliver child healthcare, antenatal and postnatal care, Pap smears, and psychiatric and curative medical care to residents of Guy’s Hill and surrounding areas. However, patients as far away as St Mary and St Ann now depend on it for healthcare.
Head nurse Trisha Gaye Bennett told The
Gleaner that for the past five years, since assuming duties at the facility, she has had to make do with diminishing services and staff over the years, even as the number of patients
has increased.
“This facility was established to cater to the curative, maternal and child healthcare needs of the community. We used to have an assigned doctor who would do three weekly visits, but this has gone down to one visit per week. [There was also] a midwife who would make frequent visits. The building is old with old furniture, and we have to do a lot of improvisation to help our patients,” Bennett explained.
“In my view, this health centre is not functioning as a Type 2 facility. For this to be achieved, the curative clinic should be held every day instead of the once per week, which is presently the case. We are badly in need of a dressing area,” she stated, adding that plans were once floated for the garage area to be transformed into a dressing area but that there has not been any movement on this proposal.
Bennett identified a lunch area for staff and the upgrading of the bathroom facilities as immediate needs. “No dental service is available here, and this should also be addressed. In fact, the entire health system need to be overhauled. We need computers for record-keeping and modern equipment,” she said, pointing to the manual blood pressure machine on her desk to support her claims.
She added that patients who use the health centre are also impacted by the lack of pharmacy services. “This health centre attends to an average of 40 to 50 patients daily, and there is no accessible pharmacy service to help the patients who are incapable of going to Linstead or Spanish Town to fill their prescriptions,” the head nurse expressed.
Added Bennett: “The problem could easily be addressed by the introduction of a mobile Drug Serv pharmacy stocked with the most frequently used drugs making weekly visits to the health centre to assist patients who are not able to travel to fill prescriptions.”