This week we asked the man and woman in the street at Linden what they thought about the medical facilities there and the new Linden Hospital Complex that is to be completed shortly. Below are their responses:
Interviews and photos
by Cathy Richards
Neptrid Hercules – mechanic: ‘Changes can only come if you have doctors. Despite how many hospitals you build you can’t get changes if you don’t have doctors and nurses. It is my opinion that the time is too short for the young nurses that they have now. All the older nurses are going out of the system and if you want them to stay you have to pay them well.
‘When you come to the hospital with an emergency problem it takes hours before you get to see a doctor and this happens because there are not sufficient doctors in the system. I really feel that they should do much better than they are doing presently. The new facility is much larger and the administration has not been able to effectively manage this smaller operation so I don’t see them doing any better in the new facility. They have to get more doctors and a stronger administration.’
Yvonne Drakes – seamstress: ‘I believe the medics at the hospital are doing a very good
job especially Medex Glasgow, she has been there for many years and has proven to be a very caring person. The service at the dispensary has improved a lot in their way of delivery. Before now you had to wait an extended period before you could have gotten your medication but it has improved a great deal now.
‘I have a problem with the non-English speaking doctors. They have tremendous problems understanding patients and patients understanding them and that is of major concern to me. A patient does not only depend on the prescribed medication to get well. They also depend on the advice of the doctor and if there is a situation where even the nurses cannot interpret what those doctors are saying it is very bad. Building a new hospital is beautiful, but it is my opinion that the existing one could have been rehabilitated and the remainder of the finances would have gone towards the purchasing and installation of modern equipment.
‘I have no personal complaints about the nurses but I have heard many persons complaining about the night services. They claim that most times they come to the hospital at nights doctors are never around. There are a few medications they don’t have available but that happens all around. We have to be very grateful for the free services we receive in the country it is not until you travel to other countries that you get to really appreciate what we have here. We are in a very good situation here in Linden and the wider Guyana and we must care and cherish what we have here. It is by far different in other countries.’
Dillan Thompson – seamstress: ‘I would safely say that we are having a new hospital and I think we should improve tremendously on the services, the efficiency of the nurses and the doctors. I think the doctors on call do not operate at the level as if it is an emergency because when you go to the emergency and they are called out they come at their own pleasure time. Sometimes you feel they want to see blood or real serious things like a suicide, or murders before they rush to the emergency unit and the nurses to operate very fast. Sometimes the nurses are very reluctant in their behaviour. Their attitude at work and how they treat patients leave much to be desired. I really think that it’s time that they move to another level especially now that they are preparing to go into a new building. That building is much bigger and it means that it can accommodate a lot more patients and if it was hard for then to effectively deal with the small numbers of people at this present building what would they do at a bigger facility? The other thing is that they have been prolonging the opening of the new hospital for far too long. They had announced that it would have opened since early last year and until now nothing has happened. It is my understanding that there are quite a lot of things still to be done. I am not sure if they would be opened by December of this year.’
Winston Fraser – contractor: ‘Once they are able to get a better team of doctors I think
things would be much better at the new hospital. They also need to raise the salaries of the nurses to encourage them to work harder and provide a better service to patients. I know the doctors do get a good pay packet but the nurses need to be looked at.
‘The services of the doctors they have there is definitely not good at this time. Most times when you go to the hospital from early in the morning you never get to see a doctor until five in the afternoon and this hospital is not as big as Georgetown and you don’t have to wait all those long hours there to see a doctor. In fairness too to the few doctors I think that they need more assistance because very often those few doctors have to be on call throughout the night and then they have to come out in the morning to deal with a large number of patients. So while they need to pull up their socks they need more doctors to make the work load lighter. As for the CEO of the hospital I think he is too slow they need a new and vibrant person to go over to that new hospital. He has passed retirement age and I think he should move on now. No hard feelings Mr. Gumbs but it’s time to move on and give way to new blood.’
Lydia Allen – clothes vendor: ‘There could be a lot of difference with the opening of the new hospital but the main thing is that they have to get more doctors. That is a sore point here at the Linden hospital. These doctors need to be operating around the clock too.
The sanitary condition has to be improved tremendously. Presently it is very bad all the walls at certain parts start falling in the plumbing system. It is very ugly and a lot of other things crumbling at this time. The hospital is a place where sick people go to get care and not to be stressed out further than their conditions are already doing to them.
‘The long waiting for care is another thing. Sometimes you go there since 6 am with the hope that you would get through early and get to return home at a certain time. Instead you end up spending the entire day there from 6-7 or 8 pm before the doctor finish with you. If you have an emergency and you go to the outpatient area you have to wait endless hours before the medic comes. I am a medical patient and I am speaking from experience. I would get to the hospital since early the morning and would not leave until after 7 pm that is overbearing. I endure but what about older persons? So many of them don’t get anything to eat while they wait, some of them have to be lying on the benches to wait for the doctor and that is so wrong. Very rare would you find a doctor coming out on call and that is very bad. I would recommend that they seriously look at having more doctors to work around the clock and that would make a big difference at the new hospital. As it is right now a lot of the load is falling on the nurses and the doctors are not doing enough and that can never be fair. Yes nurses need to get experience but everyone has their job to do and they must do it. That is what they are being paid for. I hope that we have a new and improved approach to care when they go over to the new hospital.’
Oswald Charles – promoter: ‘To me the new hospital would bring some good to residents
of Linden and the surrounding communities. I am hoping that we don’t transfer the old practices to the new hospital. When we have development it must be for the better. You should be able to examine your previous challenges and work at making it better and that’s the task the administration has facing them.
‘I am aware that at the administrative level there would be some problems that they are faced with that are not communicated down to the smaller man, so we would not get the real thing of what is happening that is causing a damper on the delivery of services.
‘I know that there are a lot of good things that go on at the hospital but there are a few rotten apples among the midst that smell up the entire basket.
‘With the new hospital coming on stream the administration has to get rid of the rotten apples or turn them into something good to make the service to person a pleasant one.
There is a major shortage of doctors and I am hoping that is being taken into consideration while they are preparing to open up a new hospital.
‘We are a third-world country and so we need to work around our limitations and make the best of what we have available and at the same time provide the best possible care.’
Selwyn Lancaster – lecturer: ‘The hospital system here in Linden is totally lousy. For a community like this and all the riverain communities that have to access these services it is very outrageous. The system at the hospital has to be improved a lot. There needs to be upgrades. Ever so often you would find senior citizens going to the hospital from very early in the morning like 6 o’clock and they have to be there in adverse conditions until night. What sort of situation is that?
‘I am of the understanding that the hospital is there to provide care and not frustrate persons. After a senior citizen has to spend such a long time waiting to see a doctor what you expect their blood pressure to read when the doctor finally comes and has to read it?
‘This situation is either that there is a lack of personnel or the system is terrible. I trust that the new hospital system brings about some level of improvement. You don’t just bring a new facility with an old system. You would need a new facility with a new and improved system and I hope to the father that would be the case.
‘The administration has a lot of work to do and I hope they are well prepared to do it. They should have teams of qualified and able bodied staff to deal with challenges as they may arise especially now at the new sophisticated hospital as they call it.’
Hollis Ramessar – housewife: ‘Since I have been going to that hospital I have given birth
to five children and not one time have I had any problems with the doctors or the nurses. Persons need to examine themselves before they go around talking bad about the hospital.
In most cases it is patients who come to the hospital and expect that they should be given certain privileges. They come and meet other patients and they usually expect the nurse to skip those persons and deal with them right away and that shouldn’t be.
The service at the Linden Hospital is very commendable and I am speaking from experience. The nurses and doctors are the most courteous than anywhere else in this country and you can take my word for it.
‘I could only imagine how better things would be at the new hospital. There would be a lot more advanced technology used there and the service would definitely improve. I want to publicly commend the administration and the nurses and doctors for what they have been doing for people. I know that they do have their problems but despite that they do their best and we must give praises where it is due.
‘We are living in a time when things all over the world are hard and we have to learn to stop thinking about ourselves and give some consideration to those doctors too. They are not many and sometimes the doctor on call at night has to report for duty the next morning and we would want to kill him if he gives wrong medication. So they have to get their rest to take care of us properly. It’s time we stop criticizing and look at ourselves.’
Olive Dow – food vendor: ‘The situation at the Linden hospital is not up to standard because people are usually there for endless hours before they can be looked after. I am more concerned about the elderly folks who go to clinic and have to wait endless hours to see the doctor.
‘I feel that when the new system is in place after building and opening the new hospital those things would change for the better.
‘I hope that the Ministry of Health is prepared to have more doctors to work around the clock at that new hospital. I am hoping too that the new hospital would have more modern facilities to provide a better service.
‘Often the ambulance has to be taking simple cases to Georgetown which could be done right here only if they had the right doctors and the proper facility.
‘Generally I think the administration means well but they are hampered by the lack of proper facilities. And I hope that the new hospital would have the facilities that would make things easier for the nurses, doctors, administration and the patients.
‘More than anything I am concerned about the elderly folks who have to go there at least once a month. My husband is one of those persons made to suffer. He would leave home around 6 am and most times he never leaves the hospital until after 7 pm. That is most terrible.
‘I think that they are way behind with the opening of the new hospital. Given the time that hospital started construction it should have been opened by now and the new system should have been operating already.’
Rollin Tappin – private sector employee: ‘Having looked as the situation as regards the state of the Linden hospital, it is a shame that a Member of Parliament had to be at the hospital and use the facilities there and having assessed the conditions there before the whole issue could have burst out into the public. This whole thing about the dilapidated state of the hospital has been going on for the last two or more years now.
‘The situation there had to be looked at by the authorities of the hospital and they have been failing us.
‘My recommendation is that the hospital administration does a thorough beefing up of the ancillary staff and let them know their duties and if there is any one of the facilities that is in a state of dysfunction that they report it to the administration so they can deal with problems in a timely manner.
‘Although it was an MP who recognized this problem there are other families who are using the facilities on a regular basis. They felt that they had no medium where they could have expressed their view and not be victimized, so they endured the situation and went back home with a sorry mind.
‘I think the administrative half of the hospital needs to be blamed for that entire situation. The problem was in existence for a very long time and no one did anything until the MP went to the media with it.
‘As it relates to the new hospital I think that the administration going into it needs to set some standards and maintain those standards in terms of delivering proper health care to the Linden community. It is going to be a state-of-the-art hospital so they need to set a serious standard and stick to it.’