Dec 13 - Hassan-Nahon Calls For “Detailed, Wide-Ranging” Evidence-Gathering Exercise At GHA
Independent MP Marlene Hassan-Nahon has called on the Government to conduct a “detailed, wide-ranging and frank evidence gathering exercise” to discover what major problems are currently faced by GHA staff.
Hassan-Nahon said: “The state of our health service has always been of great concern to me, and much of my young parliamentary career has involved raising the concerns of staff and patients alike. It is in this spirit that I welcome the GSD drawing attention to the issues affecting doctors and other professionals employed by the GHA. Indeed, I recently voiced many of these issues to government, including in Parliament, and have been keen to share my findings in an attempt to improve the service. I am therefore encouraged to see my Opposition colleagues follow up my efforts with their statement last week.
“In response to the results of the survey published with the statement, I believe that Government is correct in its judgment of the methodology behind the survey. Questions can clearly be asked about the interpretation of the data, and doubts cast on its accuracy. However, just because the methodology might be imprecise does not mean that the sentiment behind the results is wrong. In fact, this worrying assessment of the state of morale within the agency, as well as of relationships with management, echoes many of the testimonies which have been communicated to me by disaffected and dissatisfied doctors, information which I have already shared with the government as part of my handling of the issue. This material seems to indicate that there are strains in some sectors of the structure of the GHA, and the government would do well to heed this. Indeed, one of the most common complaints I have come across when speaking to doctors is that they often feel that they are not been listened to by management, and to discard this sentiment would only validate such frustrations. I trust that the appointment of Minister Costa as Minister of Health will lead to a new leadership that will immediately tackle these various issues.
“Doctors and nurses are among a community’s most precious resources, and one dissatisfied member of staff is simply one too many. As concerns can be legitimately raised about the robustness and validity of the results produced by this survey, I call on the government to carry out a detailed, wide-ranging and frank evidence-gathering exercise that fully encompasses the many different sectors of the GHA (doctors, nurses, administrators, ancillary staff, etc.) in order to gain an accurate picture of the issues which may be affecting the very workers who we should be supporting, with the findings and results of this exercise made publicly available. This should hopefully provide Minister Costa and his team with all the information they need to design and execute an action plan that will address these issues directly and lead not only to the health service our community deserves, but also of which we can be proud.”
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