KARACHI:Hospitals in Pakistan are being run by excellent physicians and surgeons who are finest people in the their respective fields of medicine and surgery but most of them don’t have management degrees or training to deal with growing influx of patients and their attendants as well as their own staff, which is resulting in chaos and mismanagement at healthcare facilities.
“Public sector hospitals should be run by their chiefs and medical superintendents in such a manner where they could have medical treatment for themselves and their families instead of sending them to private hospitals”, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Indus Hospital Network Prof Dr Abdul Bari Khan said while speaking at launching ceremony of Institute of Learning Excellence (ILE) here at a local hotel.
He said Institute of Learning Excellence (ILE) would hopefully be an innovative solution to train healthcare providers, CEOs and MSs in effectively running their health institutions and to provide maximum facilities to patients, their attendants and even the healthcare providers.
According to him, doctors are taught everything at their medical schools and varsities except for management. In the public sector, they are made medical superintendents after certain years of experience but they don’t have the experience to run large healthcare facilities, which result in chaos and sufferings for both patients and healthcare providers.
Prof Khan deplored that there was no system at public institutions for the capacity building of doctors who are chosen to head the medical and health facilities and often their inexperience in the field of management results in problems for patients and their own staff including doctors, nurses and paramedics.
“This is one of the reasons why our healthcare system has failed to deliver. We don’t put right people in the right place, we don’t appreciate the people who are doing their jobs sincerely and effectively and we are putting wrong people to do the jobs which they are not capable to perform”, he maintained.
Eminent Patient-Safety Expert and Prof at Wayne State University School of Medicine, USA Dr Paul Barach deplored that millions of deaths were occurring at health facilities annually due to poor quality care while 20 percent of patients discharged from the hospitals were being readmitted with few days, which could have been avoided.
“An epidemic of unhappiness has gripped the healthcare sector in entire world including Pakistan, where 40 to 50 percent healthcare providers are depressed due to long working hours and exhaustion, work-related stress, poor working conditions and unrealistic expectations from their superiors and people around them”, he said and called for transforming healthcare facilities by improving working conditions for the healthcare providers.
He said he was not aware of the state of mental conditions of doctors, nurses and paramedics in Pakistan but keeping in view the growing number of patients at each and every hospital, studies should be carried out to ascertain the mental condition as many of them hide their depression, stress and signs of burn-out, which is neither good for them nor the patients they see at the healthcare facilities.
Director ILE Dr Zakiuddin Ahmed said ILE would be an institution which would facilitate healthcare providers in professional development and acquiring leadership training, which would help them in effectively running large health facilities.
Prof Zaman Shaikh, Dr Bashir Hanif, Abdul Latif Shaikh, Haroon Qassim, Syed Jamshed Ahmed and others were also present at the occasion.