Nurses strike takes toll on Psychiatric Hospital

Health workers at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital are under extreme pressure to provide care to the increasing number of mentally ill patients at its facility.

It follows the withdrawal of services of newly employed psychiatric nurses who have not been paid for several months.

Government has cited technical hitches and bureaucratic tendencies for the delay in the payment of the salaries.

The striking nurses have remained resolute they will stay away until they are paid monies owed them.

The strike is having a deleterious effect on other health workers at the Psychiatric hospital.

Hospital administrators and other nurses who are already on the pay roll and are receiving salaries told Joy News they are over stretched.

"I don't have enough words to describe the pressure. There are no staff to work with. Some who are supposed to go on leave had to withhold their leave and sacrifice and be on the ward and help us. [But for this] "It would have been one person managing 26 patients," one of the workers said.

Another said three nurses handled 24 patients on Tuesday, something that was unacceptable.

With the unpredictability of patients at the psychiatric wards, she said it was dangerous to overburden few nurses with overbearing tasks.

Authorities at the Accra psychiatric hospital say they have been forced to cut back on admission of new patients to the infirmary.

The Medical Director of the hospital, Dr Pinamang Apau said those on leave have been called back but even that has not reduced the pressure on the hospital.

She said they have taken a decision to cut down admission to the barest minimum.

This means that only patients who pose danger to themselves and to their families would be taken in whilst those whose ailments are considered mild will be turned away.