(Trinidad Express) Emergencies at public health institutions in this country are generally prioritised by gunshot wounds, stab wounds or arriving in an unconscious state.
Those whose illnesses are not as visible, regardless of how ill they may feel, are told their cases are not emergencies and so inevitably they are left to wait for hours on end to get medical attention.
The Express witnessed this torture that hundreds of sick people of different ages and genders were forced to endure at the casualty areas and clinics during visits last week to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Mt Hope, the Port of Spain General Hospital and the Arima Health Facility.
At all three medical institutions, members of the public voiced concerns that death would probably knock at their doors before they were seen by the doctors.
However, the process at the Arima facility was by far the worst as the sick were forced to move no less than five times to five different rooms at the institution before they could be seen by a doctor to be diagnosed.
One woman at the Arima Health Facility, who was among more than 100 people waiting in the General Practitioner area, told the Express she was weakened after three days of vomiting, pain and frequent bowel movements and had gone to the Arima facility, dreading what she knew would be a slow and painful process.
With no other alternative, she arrived at 8 a.m. where she was greeted by scores of people who lined the corridors, seating area and walls of the waiting area.
Her wait to be seen by a doctor was even longer than she dreaded and, by 11.45 a.m., now barely able to sit up in her chair she said, “You could have time dead inside here before you see a doctor. Look at the time and I still sit down here waiting and if you see how much people in the other rooms still waiting.”
Walking along the corridors of the Arima Health Facility, entering the various treatment areas was a shocking experience as scores of visibly sick people seeking medical attention waited. Women with babies in arms, toddlers, pre-schoolers and teenagers. Elderly people all were forced to wait, some for close to five hours before they could be seen by a doctor.
Malcolm Jack, who also arrived at the facility a little after 8 a.m., said although there are times the wait is not as long, that day was overbearing.
“Is now two and a half hours that I here and I haven’t seen anyone yet. I think the problem is the number of people who working here because they have just one person registering you in front and is already a hundred and something people here already for the morning,” he said.
At noon Jack was still at the hospital.
An elderly woman, who had also been waiting for quite some time was overjoyed to hear her name called to go into the doctor’s office, jumped off her seat and shouted “Praise the Lord!” as she made her way across the room.
As people waited in various areas of the facility, many fell asleep sick and exhausted by the long wait.
Christina Sealy came with her 64-year-old mother to have a dressing on her foot changed.
“We have been here since a little after eight, it is already 10.45 a.m.
We have number 126, they are now at number 111 and we haven’t been screened yet, plus they have to take blood and all that, so is whole day,” she said.
Jennifer Rogers, who attends clinic there, said there is a serious need for a real hospital with more staff to care for the people of Arima.
“Here never have medicine. They give you the prescription and when you go to the dispensary you can’t get the drugs. A while back I was sick so bad I could not even walk. They prescribed something for me, but they didn’t have it here so I had to go to Sangre Grande to get it.
People does never get medicine here; is either they don’t have it or the dispensary closed.
“Because it come like your family need food and you close off the kitchen. Sometimes people have to go quite to Mt Hope to get the prescription filled and before they get there they die,” Rogers said.
Another patient described the process as tedious. “Here is like a big oversize clinic because if you have a real emergency they have to send you to another hospital. The fastest area you are seen is in the front when you are given your number,” she said.
The horror stories the Express found at the Port of Spain General were of a similar nature, but had complexities of their own.
Imagine having a medical condition since 2004, not being able to afford private health care you go to the public hospital hoping to not only get some relief for your condition but also to have it diagnosed and eight years later after being transferred from one clinic to the next there is still no diagnosis for your medical condition.
This is the story of a 40-year-old mother of four from Diego Martin who has been transferred from the care of one doctor to another in at least four different clinics at the same hospital over the past eight years but none have been able to diagnosis what her complaint is.
According to the woman, who asked that her name not be used, she was at the hospital for an appointment that she was given in 2010 to hopefully this time get a diagnosis for the problem she has lived with since 2004.
“I started getting a bad pain on my right side but it would go and come, but whenever I over-worked I would get it, so I came to the hospital. They took X-rays, MRIs but so far they have not been able to diagnose what is wrong with me.”
“When I got the appointment back in 2010 for 2013 I told the person who gave me the appointment that I could have time die before I get diagnosed because of the length of time I had to wait,” she said.
Having to wait hours in the clinic at the Port of Spain General Hospital, she said, was painful in its own way.
“This system really backward yes. You come here early, you come late, you still leaving late because is who you know.”
She said she has had to endure the torture that the system metes out because she is poor and can’t afford to pay to be seen at a private institution.
The clinics which were at one time in separate locations are now in one area, so on any given day people in the eye clinic, surgical clinic and orthopaedic clinic all have to assemble in the same area to wait, which makes it confusing for people because they have no idea who came before them to see the same doctor.
The Express bumped into Germaine Henry, a 64-year-old woman from Carenage, who told her story of being turned away by nurses after being given an appointment to do a procedure for numbness in her feet after she and a nurse had a quarrel at the Carenage clinic.
Henry said she continues to suffer because of this.
“I went to the clinic because I wasn’t feeling well, but I got there a bit late, about 9 a.m. because of the pain and numbness in my right leg it takes me longer to get dressed and to walk.
“So when I got to the health centre, I met a young lady who had also just arrived and I asked her whether there were any more cards to see the doctor. She told me that the nurse told her to sit down and wait. I told myself that if she was being allowed to see the doctor the nurse would also allow me to see him— this never happened.”
Henry said she asked the nurse if she would be allowed to see the doctor and her response was discourteous. But Henry said she waited anyway, hoping that the doctor would see her.
“I sat there waiting and when the last person came out the doctor came out of the office and called me by name. I found it strange because the nurse had not given me a card to see him but I said yes.
He then told me that he would not be able to see me that day and that I would have to come back another day.”
She said she left and subsequently got an appointment at the Port of Spain General Hospital for the procedure to be done, but the same thing happened again.
Henry said she ended up getting another appointment for the procedure to be done at the Port of Spain General Hospital and the same thing happened again.
“Two people who came after me were called in before me; but I sat there waiting because I could not believe that they would do that again, because I had to stay 24 hours without eating in order to have the procedure done.
“A good while later the nurse called me by name and told me that she had bad news that they would not be able to do the procedure.”
She said she went back to the doctor who had referred her to the Port of Spain General Hospital and told him what happened.
“The next time I went to the clinic the nurse called me again by name and asked me who had been talking to the doctor about what had happened. I told her that I did because I found it to be an injustice.
Little did I know that it was the same nurse who I had the first falling out with who had been transferred back to the General Hospital and had me going in circles. I am a sick elderly person and you preventing me from getting the health care I need out of spite,” she said.
At another clinic at the Port of Spain General, a patient waiting to be seen in another clinic told the Express a story of long waits but this time added in another element of lost files.
Asked her thoughts on the current system at the Port of Spain General Hospital, she laughed and said, “Same old story— the system is poor. When you come here you have to wait so long. Yesterday I was here for another clinic appointment and I spent almost whole day, so this morning I didn’t rush myself.”
She said the administration at the hospital is terrible.
“I don’t know if they are bombarded by the amount of people they have to care for but they lose your files and have you sitting waiting and won’t tell you what’s happening and you seeing people who come after you going in front of you. You give them all of the information possible hoping for a smooth process, but they don’t write down the information and then you end up in these frustrating positions.”
She said there needs to be the introduction of a number system at the Port of Spain hospital, which the Mt Hope Hospital currently operates under.
“Not everyone has the luxury of being able to stay away from work in order to get health care. People have jobs and they can’t spend all day waiting to see the doctor; they have to go back to work.
Loss of files was also an issue that the Express picked up on at Mt Hope.
An elderly patient who had cataracts removed two weeks ago was told to return to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Mt Hope, for a follow-up he got there at 6 a.m. but up to 11.45 a.m was still waiting to be seen because his file could not be found.
One woman who came all the way from Manzanilla with her husband on two consecutive days also had complaints about the administrative staff at the hospital.
“They need to be more organised because they were constantly making mistakes that are avoidable. We came here yesterday because my husband had to do an ECG but the girl who gave my husband the appointment wrote down the wrong date.
“It was supposed to be today but she wrote down yesterday’s date when the person who is supposed to do the ECG is not there on Wednesdays so we had to come back today. And that happened because she was talking so much instead of concentrating on what she was doing,” the woman said.
Asked whether she, too, has problems with accessing medication at the pharmacy, she said it takes too long so her husband purchases it outside.
Several women waiting for their spouses to be seen at various clinics or to see the doctors themselves all complained of not being able to access medication at the pharmacy at Mt Hope.
