A call came on the clinician\u2019s phone. It was from another health worker at the hospital.<\/p>\n
There was what medical practitioners call \u201cfoetal distress situation\u201d and they needed the help of this clinician who was at that time granting an interview to the media.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrepare her for theatre. I\u2019m on my way,\u201d responded the clinician, whose name we will not disclose.<\/p>\n
And the interview with the media ended abruptly as the clinician went on putting on his theatre uniform before scampering to the ward.<\/p>\n
The hospital has two trained doctors, the District Health Officer (DHO) and District Medical Officer (DMO).<\/p>\n
The two rarely work in the ward since they are also overwhelmed with administrative duties at the hospital in the Eastern region.<\/p>\n
There has been debate on whether graduate doctors should be working in administration roles instead of being full time in the ward to serve situations like what this clinician encountered.<\/p>\n
However, our random interviews among some DHOs across the country established that the doctors themselves do not see it as a problem to do duo roles.<\/p>\n
DHO for Blantyre Dr Medson Matchaya says it is not true that working as a DHO compromises a doctors\u2019 practice in the ward.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy should it be an issue when doctors work as DHOs while teachers can serve as Dem [District Education Manager] and Police Officers can serve as officer-in-charge without being questioned?\u201d He says.<\/p>\n
Matchaya also argues that the College of Medicine graduates at least 60 doctors every year but there is still acute shortage of health workers in the country\u2019s facilities.<\/p>\n
That shortage, he says, cannot be attributed to the fact that some doctors are combining their role in the wards with administrative duties.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have worked as a DHO in Nsanje and I combined these two very well,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
DHO for Mangochi Dr William Peno says the issue of working as DHO and attending to patients in the wards is only the question of time management.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spend 25 per cent of my time in the ward and the rest of my time on administrative and other related work,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Peno says most doctors may be moving away from bedside practice because there is less motivation as compared to administrative work.<\/p>\n
DHO for Lilongwe Dr Mwawi Mwale also says it is possible to balance the two responsibilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis doubling is not what is contributing to under staffing in the health sector in the country.<\/p>\n
There is a job description for us and we are not misplaced at all,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Executive Director for Malawi Health Equity Network (Mhen) Martha Kwataine says the problem is that the system in the health sector has created better incentives for administrative related work than the actual medical practice.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe propose increase in budget for doctors so that they save lives of Malawians instead of them being in the office. The same is happening in the nursing profession. Once a registered nurse midwife gets a Masters Degree, they stop serving on the bed side of the patient,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
She says the current Public Sector Reforms and the reforms within the public health sector should address this matter.<\/p>\n
Kwataine adds:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe current Health Sector Strategic Plan focuses on quality and equity. What is currently happening in the health sector is not equity: Why should there be favour for a certain group of people when all of them spent sleepless nights in college learning about the human body and how to treat it when it is dysfunctional?\u201d<\/p>\n
On his part, Executive Director for Health and Rights Education Programme, Maziko Matemba, says it is high time the country acted on \u201cthis anomaly\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolicy makers must have a heart for poor Malawians by creating an enabling environment for qualified health care workers to remain in the system and save lives,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Data from the College of Medicine shows that the institution has graduated 676 Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) doctors between 1992 and 2014.<\/p>\n
That however has not stopped the country from experiencing shortage of doctors in the wards of the country\u2019s hospitals.<\/p>\n
Acting Principal for the college Mwapatsa Mipando says the institution\u2019s recent research has shown that over 80 per cent of its graduates are working in Malawi.<\/p>\n
\u201cFurthermore, of the 20 per cent that are outside the country, 62.2 per cent of them are doing further studies in South Africa under the sponsorship of the Ministry of Health with support from the Global Fund,\u201d Mipando says.<\/p>\n
Early this year, the Ministry of Health said the country\u2019s health service is under staffed to the level that health worker to patient ratio is at four health workers per every 100,000 patients.<\/p>\n
This is way below the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendation of 20 doctors per every 100,000 patients.<\/p>\n
Ministry of Health Deputy spokesperson Adrian Chikumbe says the ministry is aware of this problem and is working on it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe already have a few doctors and giving them administrative positions has worsened this. We are working on normalising this and you will soon notice that these doctors are back into the wards,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Still, it is not clear whether the assignment of doctors into DHO positions is a major contributing factor to shortage of qualified doctors in the country\u2019s hospitals.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A call came on the clinician\u2019s phone. It was from another health worker at the hospital. There was what medical practitioners call \u201cfoetal distress situation\u201d and they needed the help of this clinician who was at that time granting an interview to the media. \u201cPrepare her for theatre. I\u2019m on my way,\u201d responded the clinician, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5566,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5561\/revisions\/5566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}