Tembisa Hospital addresses its challenges in nursing department

The Tembisa community often expresses their unhappiness and frustration with poor service delivery occurring frequently at the Tembisa Provincial Tertiary Hospital.

Residents complain about hostile nurses with bad attitudes, lack of compassion, seriously inadequate care and waiting for long periods in casualties.

Head of nursing at Tembisa Hospital, Wilfred Mothwane, delivered the State of the Nursing Department Address for the first time on the occasion of the joint sitting of nurses at the hospital’s conference centre on January 18.

Mothwane said their vision is to be among the best academic health care centres in the country for research, medical education and excellent patient care.

“Our core values are professionalism, attitude, honesty, respect, and caring.

“We are always aiming to make our patients feel welcomed, appreciated and worthy of our best efforts in everything, and not to cause harm.

“Our primary purpose is to preserve life,” added Mothwane.

He said they are not going to take it lightly when nurses continue to mistreat patients.

“The staff’s attitudes are still being reported in most of our departments including nursing management.

“Our nurses are taught about customer care services among other programmes provided which will enable them to do their work exceptionally well.

“More monitoring, evaluation and reporting will strengthen us.

“We’ve implemented a nursing cluster with a leader which will see more nursing managers on the floor.

“We will be able to identify problems as they come and on a daily basis,” said Mothwane.

He emphasised that absenteeism and abuse of managers’ sick leave or unplanned leave will be dealt with.

He said the following departments are to be looked at in terms of performance:

Trauma and Surgery Wards, Staff Development, Ward 17, Ward 07, Ward 20, Ward 09 and Ward 11.

“Colleagues, we are not a killing hospital but a healing hospital. “Tembisa Hospital will not be the same again,” said Mothwane.

When asked on how they will be able to overcome last year’s challenges, Mothwane said good communication, decision-making, problem-solving skills, networking and brainstorming are strategies that will strengthen the leadership and in turn contribute to a higher performance level in management.

“Our commitment to nursing in a facility must always be of the best quality, best practices and best outcomes in everything we do,” added Mothwane.

Responding to the speech, Ward 14 community leader Mandla Sibanyoni said the hospital should consider cleanliness regardless of the major challenges that they are faced with.

“There were allegations that our hospital has big rats.

“The management should also work on the overcrowded departments which lead to lack of service delivery in the hospital,” added Sibanyoni.

Meanwhile, the hospital’s acting assistant manager Vijendra Gajraj advised the nursing staff to raise their concerns to the nursing manager.

“Nurses shouldn’t assume that they will be heard, rather approach the person and know for sure that your concern is being raised before reporting to the next level.

“Our goal is to take Tembisa Hospital to a benchmark standard.

“I don’t see the point of some nurses working independently.

“Nursing is a team effort in order to save lives,” said Gajraj.