Despite overwhelming odds, Groote Schuur strives to serve patients to best of ability

A LETTER to the public:

The management team and staff at Groote Schuur Hospital deeply regret any patient experience that does not reflect the values that our institution upholds.

Our hospital has always and continues to strive towards excellence in health care. Such care is delivered by our caring and competent staff members.

We serve almost 100 000 inpatients and up to 600 000 outpatients a year. These are vulnerable citizens who have been dependent on us for their health for the past 80 years.

Lately there has been an increase in the number of negative patient experiences shared in the media and on social media.

We acknowledge that our commitment to value is aspirational and that our care does not always meet these standards, but at the same time, we acknowledge our

3 800 committed staff members who serve patients in our overloaded service.

While we do receive complaints, which certainly must be addressed, we also receive many compliments from our patients. We can only improve our standards if matters are brought to our attention directly through our internal structures. From experience, we know patients often just need someone to listen to them and explain the situation to allay their anxieties.

In the busy environment of a hospital, this is sometimes difficult, but we have systems in place to address this, since complaints addressed at the source have a far higher potential to be resolved satisfactorily.

We therefore urge our patients who have a concern to please ask for the nursing manager or the medical manager on duty, or use our complaints and compliments email address to bring matters to our attention. Ensure you get the name of the staff member you spoke to.

We will respond to your queries and needs.

Sharing negative experiences publicly may create a false perception among readers that the hospital has been informed (when we may not have been) and don’t pay attention to patient concerns, which is untrue.

Just as we should serve our patients with a high standard of ethics, so too is there an imperative on the public to bring matters to our attention first.

We will endeavour to address these concerns at all levels and agree wholeheartedly that bad behaviour from our staff is unacceptable, no matter how busy they may be.

Our staff are repeatedly exposed to emotional and sometimes physical abuse from patients we serve and often feel the demands and expectations of them never seem to be good enough, however hard they try.

I reiterate my commitment to the public that Groote Schuur Hospital will continually strive to offer the best care possible to all its patients.