It’s time for patients to audit doctors and nurses

Every year, we send auditors to government health facilities to go and do one thing that, does not inure to the benefit of the patients, who visit the hospitals and clinics to seek treatment.

Auditors go there, to audit the books; we are only interested in the numbers and figures, but not the human being.

How many times, haven’t people complained about medical negligence or ill-treatment from doctors and nurses?

The complaints and lamentations, only go as far as to get journalists, discuss on a radio station, without any real action taken to sanction those involve.

The Ghana Education Service sends out supervisors every term or at most every year, to various governments schools across the country. The purpose
is to assess the teachers, who have been posted to teach, whether or not they are delivering.

They sometimes do the assessment by interviewing or engaging the students, this will give them a clear understanding and appreciation of the performance of the teacher, aside the yearly scores a school gets.

The Ghana Medical Association, like any other grouping of professionals, has the annual conference, where they discuss pertinent issues affecting the association and the new medical discoveries and trends in the world.

Members are told and thought the new ways of treating and attending to patients, they are to replicate that in their practice, yet when they get back to their various hospitals and clinics, it is business as usual.

When have we ever as a country, sampled the views of patients, vis-à-vis doctors and nurses as our hospitals and clinics?

In order to have an efficient health system, we need to periodically examine our doctors and nurses, by commissioning a team to go to the health facilities randomly to interview patients, about the level of treatment they receive.

In other jurisdiction, even lecturers are examined by students at the end of every semester to determine, whether they should be considered suitable for another semester.

In Ghana, we have allowed a lot of people to get away with so many things, it is why a fake doctor, could have the presence of mind to practice for more than twenty years, without being detected.

It is high time, the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Association, institute a scheme of assessing health personnel, it is only when that is done that, we can hope to enhance health delivery in this country.

Doctors are not more important than teachers, what is good for the goose, is good for the gander.

Doctors, even deal with human lives and so must be subjected to a higher standard.