Tinaye Agere
ONE of Zimbabwe’s major referral hospitals, Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals, is undergoing significant upgrades. Our Gender and Community Editor, Fatima Bulla-Musakwa, interviewed the institution’s chief executive officer, Dr Tsitsi Magure, on this and other issues. Read on…
Q: Can you give us the state of Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals?
A: Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals remains Zimbabwe’s largest and most sophisticated health institution. We offer the widest range of specialised healthcare services and we are the largest training hospital in the country. The hospital continues to treat people from all over the country and there are some specialist services that are only found at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals.
The hospital is doing its best with the available resources. We receive a lot of compliments from our patients and their relatives, but like any other institution, we do have a few incidences that tend to tarnish our image and spoil all the good work being done at the hospital.
Q: Can you highlight the various divisions that make up the institution?
A: Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals comprises more than 60 departments that include both clinical and non-clinical departments. Among the clinical departments, we have Surgery, Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Psychiatry, Oncology, Pediatrics, Accident and Emergency, Ophthalmology and Anesthetics.
These also have sub-specialties like orthopedics, neurosurgery, cardiovascular and thoracic surgery, nephrology and general surgery. There are also departments like pharmacy, medical laboratory, physiotherapy and radiology.
Q: What is the staff compliment compared to patients that you assist on a daily basis?
A: The institution has a bed capacity of 1 200, with a daily bed occupancy of 80 to 90 percent. An average of 700 are attended to daily in the outpatient departments, while an average of 200 patients are attended to in our Accident and Emergency Department on a daily basis.
Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals has a total staff complement of 3 316, of which 348 are doctors and 1 966 are nurses.
Q: What would you highlight as the hospital’s milestones as far as health is concerned in its operations over the years?
A: The historic resumption of open-heart surgery in 2023 has been a great milestone. This is only done at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals. The institution remains the health institution in Zimbabwe that trains specialised nurses in renal nursing, oncology and palliative care nursing, ophthalmic nursing, nurse anaesthetists, nursing administrators and community health nursing.
We also have these cadres from other countries, especially in the SADC region. We are the only hospital in Zimbabwe offering the following services – gastro-intestinal tract clinic, Kaposi sarcoma clinic, paediatric renal clinic, pulmonology clinic, breast clinic, neurological clinic, paediatric oncology, paediatric sickle cell, gynae oncology and haematology.
Q: In recent years, Parirenyatwa has been launching programmes like open heart surgery, are there more of such in the pipeline?
A: Indeed, Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals continues to expand the array of specialist services. These include the open heart, which is now an ongoing programme within the institution. We are also introducing a Psychological Support Call Centre for people having mental health problems.
Very soon, we are going to launch a state-of-the-art Kangaroo Unit for pre-term babies. The hospital is almost complete with refurbishment and a pediatric theatre, the first of its kind at the hospital. We are introducing telemedicine at the hospital, which allows specialists to consult each other whilst seeing the patient on their connected devices.
These are just a few of the developments taking place at the hospital, otherwise, there are a lot of innovations taking place at the hospital.
Q: What strategies are you implementing this year to ensure effectiveness and efficiency in service delivery?
A: Our major challenge is that of resources given that most of our patients do not pay hospital fees.
The hospital has put measures in place to increase revenue collection and revenue generation. We have also entered into strategic alliances with some organisations like the twinning arrangement with Hunan Provincial People’s Hospital in China. This arrangement has supported our pulmonology department, the telemedicine department and trained some of our personnel in specialised skills like bronchoscopy.
The hospital is embarking on a robust Customer Service Improvement Programme to enhance patient experiences. We are also in the process of digitalizing our services to improve efficiency in patient management.
Online Reporter