07/05/2024
HEALTH CARE UNDER PRESSURE:
THE PROBLEMS ATTACHED AND IT'S SOLUTION. — Nr. Salihu Usman Shuni
The foundation of a health care and health care system of each an every setting was built on a solid ground and is to provide non-tentative plans and their executions to achieve the optimum expectation of the patient & his relatives in the field of health, though people thought it was lenient carrying the overall health care activities despite the diversification of our geographical background, culture & religion alongside other challenges that lead to treatment failure, poor qualifications haunting down health care and its runners therefore producing a severe deterioration and stunt to the achievement of what we already know as the healthcare's basicgoal.
The foundation upon which the build-up of this health care is rooted is now being threatened, rotted and malingered as a result of certain number of challenges of which the most is termed "PRESSURE"
Pressure as extracted from Merriam
Webster dictionary is the burden of physical or mental distress. The national health service need healthy individuals to make up the health care, a composition of Nurses, doctors, midwives, CHOs, Health records, pharmacists, laboratory scientists that are physically and mentally stable.
The well-being of the clinical workforce is not only an important issue in itself, but can significantly impact workforce projections, the cost of healthcare and the quality of the care received by patients. The 'Triple Aim' of improving the health of the population, improving patient experience and reducing cost is a widely adopted guidance to optimise healthcare services' performance with rising patient needs, financial constraints and workforce projections.
Health care is the maintenance or improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health professionals and allied health fields. Doctors, Nurses, laboratory scientists, community health officers and other health-related professionals are all part of health care. It includes all the activities carried out to provision of adequate primary care, secondary care, as well as tertiary care.
A work-related stress is a growing problem around the world and a major contributor to creating work under pressure, that affects not only the health and well-being of employees (Health workers), but also the productivity of organisations (Hospitals, Geriatric homes, any other health care institution). Work-related stress arises where work demands of various types and combinations exceed the person's capacity and capability to cope. And this is a whole reality in our setting, giving example with the ratio of nurses in the government hospitals to patients, it's reality One nurse is to Ten, Fifteen and above patients. In some places a nurse run all of the hospital, he is: a nurse, a doctor, a lab scientists, a pharmacists and everything. and all of these patient's total demand are pose on that single nurse, may be the relatives and the patients wants a meracle to happen,
lamenting or even beating a serving nurse in a ward.
A work related stress can lead to a humiliation between a nurse and his patients and thus bring out mistrust. I will want to insist on this, the work related stress is the reason our society termed nurses as rude, unmannered, intolerant and whatsoever vulgarity. When a nurse is overworked and has done his best for you just to come and peep some annoying words because he couldn't hnish with one patient in time to attend yours, how did you expect him to respond? Nurses are thought humility, kindness, sympathy and all sort of patience but remember they are human, they have shortcomings and can make an error, but they didn't deserve such a bad treatment because of the problem that's not theirs.
Likewise a doctor attending to larger number of visiting patients would be exhausted before he can attend to half of them, don't you think this will annihilate the cause for his sitting, at the end the patients will not have adequate and undergone a thorough check-up before it's concluded that he may likely be suffering from a certain disease.
Same applied to lab scientists who carryout thousand tests a day, Oh God! An error in the investigation result is the overall error that might cause great suffering to the patient or even cost his life. G B Shaw says; " The most tragic thing in the world is sick doctor and this revolving dilemmas causing pressure at work make a doctor sick.
In the other hands government also contribute vehemently in creating pressure at work by not providing conducive environment for the care of a patient, inadequate or insufficient equipments, unemployment of adequate staffs that will carry the burden of an institution, poor remuneration, non payment of hazard allowances and so.
Unemployment of enough staffs as mentioned earlier cause a tragic irrepressible damage to the health care system and this cause continues shortage of manpower and further pressure at work subsequently.
The more the pressure the more the community and the sick people suffer, and the more the health care system failed, as I did mentioned before, the main aim of a health care and a health care system is to provide solutions, prevent illnesses, cure diseases and others, but in pressure, the work is done but done incomplete or with patches along the road, leading to unfeasible accomplishment of the set goals.
All of the above mentioned attributes of pressure at work eventually affect the workforce and make them ill, physically and mentally. Mind you when the workforce become ill that definitely says the patients will continue to be unhealthy because there is a great saying that without workforce there's no health care and without health care, every patient is bound to suffer an illness or die uneasy.
Whenever we talk about a problem, we must have thought in our minds the way to hopped on and bring solution to those problems, in this, it's a collective challenge, the government, healthcare providers, public, patients and their relatives will all have to be in this, government should continue to furnish the working place structure so that a very attractive avenue for delivering excellent, equitable and increasingly complex healthcare become in existence.
While the healthcare providers of each an every sector should know the changes they need to make at work, schedule their activities, be good at communication, know how to respond, be well organized, and never underestimate the power of relaxation and rest, they shouldn't play someone's role, let them stay strict to what is in their standing orders, that too helps in reducing the stress and pressure at work.
The public now plays a measure role on this, they become meddlesome in matters they know nothing about, they should avoid pressuring a personnel at the working place, when he's overloaded, they should know he's overloaded, when he's exhausted, they should know that too, and when he does good, they should appreciate him, the impatient nature of our community render a lot of damages in the health care system, humiliation, harassment should be avoided, use of insulting and annoying words to communicate a very exhausted health personnel is unproductive and therefore should be avolded too.
In conclusion, the standard of our health care can not be met untill the colossal factors that causes pressure at work are avoided, a normal substantial and reasonable salary scale for the workers, provision of conducive environment, regulating the ratio of health workers to patients, avoidance of workload, employing larger
numbers of healthcare providers that can met up the demand of their patients and so much many measures.
Failure to achieve minimal amount of pressure at work will produce a prolonged emaciation and degrade in our healthcare system and thus contribute to making our HEALTHCARE UNDER PRESSURE.
This article is written 2 years ago in the magazine launched by Zamfara State Students Association of UDUTH School of Nursing Sokoto under the stewardship of Ahmad Muazu Shinkafi
