By Seraphine Nyuiemedi
The Ghana Medical Association (GMA), has urged healthcare workers to be professional in how they handle patients under their care.
The GMA believes this will go a long way to tackle the numerous complaints from patients against healthcare workers on a daily basis.
The president of the Ghana Medical Association, Dr Frank Serebour, made the call at the 22nd Annual Public Lecture of the Association at Ho in the Volta Region.
The 22nd Annual Public Lecture focused on healthcare worker-patient relationships in contemporary times. Present were doctors, nurses, students, and lecturers in healthcare.
A panel discussion decried to a large extent the experiences patients go through at the hands of healthcare professionals when they visit hospitals. Dr Frank Serebour advised healthcare professionals not to allow their emotions to come into conflict with their work when giving care to their clients.
“We should all know that, as health workers, we are also patients. We stand the benefit of experiencing both being health workers and also being patients, and so we know the frustrations that we go through when you are a patient and, of course, when you are a health worker. Sometimes your personal experiences do come into play when you are treating patients, but that is why we are professionals, so we should be able to put our emotions aside, be able to attend to our patients professionally so that at the end of the day, even these issues of patients complaining and going forward to even decide to go on lawsuits and other measures to ensure that they get remedy for their complaints will not even arise.”
A counsellor at the University of Cape Coast, Prof. Linda Naa Dzama Forde, urged healthcare workers to empathise with patients to establish effective communication to aid the recovery process of patients.
“When the Health Care Worker makes a legitimate effort to empathise with the patient, good communication will be established effectively. And when that happens, the whole caregiving process will become much smoother and much simpler.”
The 22nd Annual Public Lecture of the Ghana Medical Association was held in partnership with Roche products Ghana Limited.
