Emergency department struggling

THE Port Moresby General Hospital’s (PMGH) emergency department has been struggling with capacity building and human resource training for its staff to maintain emergency health services, an official says.
Clinical director of the emergency department Dr Sonny Kibob said this had been an ongoing issue due to the lack of positions issued by the Department of Personnel Management (DPM), something which the hospital management had no control over.
Dr Kibob said the department had been struggling to retain health workers because there were no positions available and the lack of manpower had been a burden on the staff.
“We have graduated emergency medical consultants and doctors, but we have no positions to hold them to provide emergency services to the population of patients that come for treatment,” he said.
“Looking at services in NCD, most of the health facilities are not functioning (operating) during late nights or in the evenings so it has been a struggle, all the cases come to the emergency department.”
Dr Kibob said with the limited capacity of health workers the department had, they had been trying to maintain an eight-hourly shifts for doctors and nurses and ancillary staff as well to ensure services were maintained.
He said that had been a problem for a long time and they hoped that management negotiated with the Health Department and DPM to raise the manpower.
“This has put a lot of strain on the resources and the limited manpower we have cannot sustain the burden of cases coming in especially emergency cases.”
Dr said PGMH did not get adequate funding to cover all areas.