Shortage of beds in psych ward
EIGHT staff members have been assaulted by psychiatric patients at the Tembisa Hospital since January last year‚ and the death of one psychiatric patient at the hospital is being investigated by police.
This was revealed by Gauteng Health MEC Gwen Ramokgopa in reply to questions in the Gauteng legislature by DA MPL Jack Bloom.
According to Ramokgopa‚ there is one 30-bed psychiatric ward for 72-hour observation as required by law, of which 20 beds were for males and 10 for females.
But psychiatric patients were often placed in ordinary wards because the male section almost always runs at 100% bed occupancy.
Between March last year and February this year‚ psychiatric patients spent 948 days in ordinary wards.
One of the reasons for this was the unavailability of beds at Weskoppies hospital‚ which led to blockage of beds in the Tembisa psychiatric ward, so admissions ended up in medical wards.
Ramokgopa said there were no complaints or incidents reported with regard to psychiatric patients being admitted to ordinary wards.
There were‚ however‚ eight complaints of staff members being assaulted by psychiatric patients from January last year to date.
On February 22, a patient died in the psychiatric ward.
According to the preliminary security report: “Two patients started fighting each other and the security officer and nurse responded promptly. No foreign object was used.”
A case has been opened with the police and the postmortem report is awaited.
In her reply‚ Ramakgopa said when the psychiatric ward was full and there was a need to admit a high risk or violent mental health patient‚ a swap of patients took place to ensure that the high risk or violent patient was admitted to the psychiatric ward and not the medical wards.