GACC Urges Nurses To Respect Patients

The Ghana Anti- Corruption Coalition's has called on nurses to be courteous, tolerant and respectful to patients when providing services. The Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition's (GACC) latest survey on the patient perception Index (PPI) report has revealed that Ghanaians are dissatisfaction with the healthcare delivered in hospitals by nurses.

The survey conducted in collaboration with HAB foundation Ghana in 40 districts among government and private health centers across the country, Wa aimed at knowing patients perception and assessment of the quality health delivered by nurses and doctors.

The theme “Empowering Communities to Demand Better Health service Delivery in Ghana” is to empower citizens to hold service providers and health policy makers accountable as far as health care in the country was concern.

Mr. Roger Atinga, Project consultant, however stressed that the findings of the survey revealed that patients; way of measuring quality health delivery was through attitude of providers, privacy and interaction, quality of pharmacy service, treating patients with dignity and respect, places of convenience, quality of physical examination and the availability of drugs at health centers.

“Health center administrations should make patients the center of attraction by providing all these necessary requirements at the health places. He also added that this would make patients visit the health facility more often” Mr. Roger said.

He said healthcare providers, especially nurses, must be encouraged to be courteous, respectful, responsive and tolerant to patients in the process of seeking health delivery to correct the negative attitude of health professionals.

Mr. Emmanuel Adusei, HAB Foundation Ghana Representative said quality healthcare is a right, not a privilege, adding it is the mandate of government and stakeholders to ensure that this is carried out to the letter.

Mr. Adusei noted that the survey sort for policy reforms in the constitution should be made available to address concerns of patients for transparency and accountability.

Furthermore, he said Ghanaians were calling for continues awareness of the patients charter across all levels and in specific languages to inform people of their rights and responsibilities as patients.

The Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) is a cross-sectional grouping of public, private and civil society organizations with the sole aim of building a national effort to confront the problem of corruption and devise effective control measure.