Experts seek action against extension of manhours for health workers

Experts in the healthcare sector have called for urgent steps to address the extended man-hour medical practitioners go through daily, leading to their early death or general fatigue.

They argued that the more an employee stays long on a job, the more fatigue he gets which exposes them to making avoidable mistakes. 

At a-one day patient safety dialogue organised by the patient safety movement in partnership with Lagos state safety commission, the regional chair, patient safety movement, Ehi Iden, opined that the process, if not tackled, will lead to acute shortage of healthcare workers across the country. 

He defined culture of safety with a healthcare organisation as a safe and reliable environment where the foundation of transparency, safety, trust and accountability is established and maintained between the workers of the facility and the patient it serves.

Iden, who stated that patient safety, is the prevention of errors and adverse effects to patients associated with healthcare, sued for total sanity across board and safety at workplace.

He said: “Patient safety is all about looking out how we can put preventive or safe care in place to ensure that patients that come into our facility, they don’t leave our facilities by having healthcare isolated infection or be victims of medical error, or deaths that could have been preventable. So the best thing that could be put in place is the patient safety process.

“A healthcare worker is supposed to be protected against infections. All these put together, you find out that doctors that have gone through this are not sending their children to medical schools and same for nurses. So there is acute shortage of healthcare workers across board. We have a number of care we need across the world and we don’t have enough hands to do that, that is why you’ll find out that shift hours of a healthcare professional keep increasing by the day.”

In his keynote address, the Director-General, Lagos state safety commission, Hakeem Dickson, said that to achieve zero deaths due to occupational hazards in Nigeria, there is need to inculcate safety culture by all the stakeholders. He said workers who work extra hours should get paid for overtime in order to get them motivated.