‘What we do, we do to the patient’s satisfaction’

OM: This institution is the first ISO certified public health hospital in the whole of Zimbabwe and possibly in the whole of the Southern Africa region and it hinges on the issue of quality.
ISO is all about quality and its all about innovativeness we work outside the box.
We just do not wait for the Ministry of Finance to fund us but we also go out and look for funding from the corporate world.
Donors are there to be approached, donors will only give you if you approach them so that is our attitude our attitude is not to be shy of begging.
We shall continue to beg as long as it is for our benefit and for as long as it benefits the community. However, sometimes we miss it but even when we miss it we’ve been trying to make sure that we are successful.
This success comes as a result of having a highly motivated staff, highly motivated in the sense that everybody feels what they are doing is relevant to the community that they are serving.
The staff at Chitungwiza hospital is community motivated, they want to ensure that the name of the hospital is not tainted.
PC: Are there any unique services offered here in comparison to other public institutions?
OM: All our services are similar to other institutions,  but  those  that  we offer we do it at the best level.
We might not have a cancer treatment centre, we might not have other highly specialised treatment regimes but what we do we do it to the satisfaction of the patient.
We want to consider ourselves as a major diagnostics centre, we have currently engaged the services of a radiologist who is key and he does interventional radiology.
In terms of diagnostics we are moving up.  At the laboratory we have all the appropriate equipment in place.
Q: How many patients can you admit at any given time?
A: We can safely admit 500 patients. But it is also important to mention that we recently changed all our beds from the old type of metal beds to a three lever modern type of beds that are very comfortable.
PC: How have you managed all the renovations and new equipment considering the financial constraints faced by public institutions in the country?
OM: What we get from the fiscus may not be any different from any other public health institution but we utilise the funds appropriately and prioritise accordingly.
However, our other sources of funds are the corporate world, international organisations and charity organisations.
Like for instance, we have one organisation that has put its financing into building of a teaching block for clinical officers and staff accommodation. Both the buildings will be ready for occupation by May this year.
With the assistance from the donor community and the little that we get from Government, we are looking forward to refurbish all our wards into state of the art.
PC: Since the institution was upgraded to a referral centre, is the infrastructure and staff complementing the current burden of care?
OM: The workload has increased tremendously while the staff establishment has remained static, what we should be looking at is an increased number of staff.
As a result of the quality of service that we are providing, naturally you find a lot of people want to come to be attended here and what that means is that we’ll spend more resources than what we would have budgeted for.
We know that the Ministry of Finance is trying by all means to support us like they are supporting everyone else with the little that is available.
We need to improve the infrastructure in terms of creating more wards create bigger departments, the facilities are cramped. We try to do the best under that cramped environment.
For example we have about 50 deliveries every night and the space that we have in there is very small, we need more theatres.
The neonatal unit is very tiny, we should be keeping 15 babies we end up keeping 35.
As we also enter into the teaching aspect at both levels, we definitely need to have more buildings for training purposes.
PC: What other challenges are you facing as an institution?
OM: The major challenge is funding.
The welfare of the community is not appropriate at all.
The living conditions actually end up causing a much more serious health hazard, the sewers are bursting and intermittent water cuts therefore there is a very high chance of patients coming up to the hospital with cholera, typhoid and other infections.
The intention is that we must be able to prevent, the minute we stop the sewerage, make water available, the less number of people getting sick.
PC: What would be your solution to the current problems facing the health sector ie, recurrent outbreaks, health funding and employment of nurses graduates?
OM: Monies must be made available to municipalities to be able to prevent these conditions.
It is also my opinion that money saved when the number of student nurses per intake was reduced should also be channeled towards salaries of those who are on the streets.
We should be able to create a situation where the ones we train are absorbable.
Government recently reduced the number of nurses who enter into the training institutions per intake from about 100 to 30 and below.
This talk of exporting is not good for our country and besides it is only temporary measure, its not a lifetime solution.
If we talk of exporting our nursing staff we are actually encroaching into their social life and we will cause a lot of social problems.
We always say we have a brain drain in Zimbabwe, so we need to train and retain.
Now we have managed to train but we are failing to retain so there is something wrong somewhere.
Alternatively, Government can create temporary posts where people can be engaged so that they maintain their skills rather than the current scenario where they go out of the service completely.