Who is popular today?

MONTEGO BAY, St James - Doctors at the State-run Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay have expressed fright at the low levels of productivity there due to a "chronic shortage of nurses"."The nurses are leaving like flies; they are just flying out and so we have a chronic shortage of nurses. Currently, we cannot do surgeries in Falmouth at nights without moving mountains, because there is not enough nursing staff to run the theatre at night," one doctor, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Jamaica Observer."So, if you have an emergency and you are from a service like urology or orthopaedics where you need the equipment that are in Falmouth, you will either have to not do the surgery or nurses are going to have to be reassigned from Cornwall Regional. Before, we had two sets of nurses at night, one at Cornwall and the other at Falmouth," the doctor explained."It is frightening because I have to be doing everybody's job - and there seems to be no hope of things improving. We have no hope."Not only is this shortage of nurses affecting the doctors at at the Type-A hospital, but patients are also feeling the brunt of it because there has been a decrease in the quality of care being offered, the Observer learned."In the Accident and Emergency (A&E) Unit waiting time is longer because one nurse is serving three areas, and sometimes there is no vital nurse. Vital signs are important as the patient comes in because you need to know what it is that their body is dealing with to correctly triage them," the doctor shared."Now, when the A&E officer goes to see that patient and there are no vitals, you have no clue about this individual. Sometimes for four hours there is no vitals nurse, which means that everybody who comes into the hospital over that time does not have any vitals unless you clearly look like yu a pop down and you go into Trauma One."Tired and overworked doctors are now also being forced to take on the role of nurses to ensure that patients are being properly treated whenever they show up to Cornwall Regional."If there are no meds nurses, then the doctors have to be administering medications themselves. That usually slows down the process, makes life more difficult, and makes waiting time much longer."Additionally, sometimes there's just two nurses on a ward, which means that you are not going to get optimum care for the patients because the nurses dem tired and they cannot carry out the full plan. The chronic shortage has also been a problem, but it is very frightening now because the rate at which nurses are leaving is much higher. I know at least six nurses who have left the A&E department since January. I know another one [who] is also leaving," one doctor told the Observer.Another doctor expressed dismay at the rate at which the nurses are leaving for better pastures."The rate of attrition is disheartening, especially given the main reason - a liveable wage. Nurses have left, and within a short period of time have been able to afford things that some senior nurses and even other working professionals in Jamaica have not been able to afford, such as an affordable home [and] car," the doctor told the Observer.But there have been talks across the hospital that interested nurses have applied to work at Cornwall Regional and have yet to be contacted, a doctor revealed."I heard some nurses saying that there are registered nurses who have applied to the Western Regional Health Authority and they have not heard back from the region."So, there are nurses who are leaving and others who have applied to work and dem nah tek dem on. It is challenging because we just don't have enough nurses, and it is really upsetting to hear that nurses have applied and are not being employed," said the frustrated doctor.When contacted by the Observer, senior medical officer at Cornwall Regional Hospital Dr Derek Harvey confirmed that there is indeed an alarming shortage of nurses at the facility."We certainly have had a high attrition as a number of trained nurses are leaving the system. Earlier this week a specialist nurse came to me and said, 'Doc, I'm leaving,' " Dr Harvey said.With many of the hospital's specialist nurses opting for greener pastures, Dr Harvey noted that the A&E department has been severely affected. Additionally, he pointed out that the hospital's operating theatres are also buckling under pressure due to this factor."I was on vacation in December...and I got to understand that four trained emergency nurses went off and since then another two have left, so in terms of having trained specialist nurses for A&E the numbers have certainly decreased," lamented Dr Harvey."There are good days when there is adequate staffing but there are days when you find that one nurse is covering more than one area so yes, that impacts the quality of care you get," he told the Observer.Dr Harvey continued, "It is really putting a strain on the staff to be covering two emergency operating theatres full-time. I will say that is an issue."