Less than 24 hours after implementation, Health Minister Fuad Khan has backtracked on the policy allowing fathers to be present in delivery rooms in local hospitals.
He also rescinded his statement on the free use of handheld recording devices on wards and gave back the power to regional health authorities to set one-hour visiting times on mornings. He further adjusted his pronouncement on allowing patients’ relatives to remain at the hospital around the clock.
Khan also agreed to modify several other items from the One Public Health Sector Policy which he revealed earlier this week.
The modifications to the policy came after a discussion between Khan and members of the T&T Medical Association yesterday.
In a release, the association’s president Dr. M.I.O. Rahman said the minister's suggestions probably had good intent, but seemed a knee-jerk reaction without proper planning and implementation.
The association discussed the matter with Khan and reached an agreement on most of the policy items, including upgrading the level of security provided for staff and creating a centralised complaints authority with an ombudsman
for complaints.
Khan, who responded to questions via text message yesterday, said he would be modifying the policy but not removing any items.
“After this there will not be the same attitude to patients. I have asked their representatives to bring their proposal and we can find middle ground, but at least patients should know they have rights in the health sector.”
Khan also addressed the call for his removal as health minister.
“If my removal will make them provide better service to the patients and stop verbal abuse, then so be it.”
At the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Mt. Hope, yesterday, a nurse claimed she was verbally assaulted by the male relative of a patient, a husband had breakfast with his sick wife at her hospital bed and over 100 nurses loudly called for Khan’s removal.
Khan had announced that visiting hours, which were previously from 11 am to noon and from 3.30 pm to 6.30 pm, would be changed to from 7 am to 9.30 am and 3pm to 5.30 pm.
The policy was completely rejected by nurses, some of whom came from other regions to call on Khan to resign.
“Fuad must go!” nurses shouted, as they spoke about a number of issues affecting the health sector.
The nurses, represented by their union, the T&T Registered Nurses Association, planned a press conference yesterday morning, but used the opportunity to protest the new policy and the treatment of nurses by the Health Ministry.
Nurses said they were not completely against the new policy, but said consultation beforehand would have allowed Khan to understand that the system at hospitals and the infrastructure meant the new changes would be problematic.
Licensed midwife and registered nurse, Nazima Hosein, said she had worked in the healthcare system for nine years and the new policy had already caused problems to the quality of healthcare delivery.
She said there were situations where women didn’t want spouses to know about certain issues and would now find it hard to justify the privacy since the minister’s decree.
“They may have had an abortion before or are tying their tubes and don’t want their husbands to know. Some of these women are in abusive situations and these are things that will come out of this,” Hosein said.
“There are sensitive cases, patients who are 12 and 13 years old who are abused by a male relative [who] can now sit in with the victims.”