Korle Bu launches Customer Care Week
The Korle Bu Teaching Hospital launched its maiden Customer Care Week celebration in Accra last Tuesday with a charge on health professionals and staff of the hospital to shun unhealthy and unfriendly attitudes towards patients and the public.
The Public Relations Officer of the hospital, Mr Mustapha Salifu, said the stressful nature of the job tended to cause some health professionals to abandon ethics that required professionalism from them at all times.
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“Our environment is quite stressful, the numbers are huge and people tend to get stressed up in that environment,” Mr Salifu said.
“However, as health workers we need to be mindful that in spite of the stress and workload that confront us, we still have to take good care of the patients,” he added at the launch.
He said the celebration was, therefore, to afford them the opportunity to equip staff on ways to interact appropriately with patients and to provide them with the needed skills to handle patients, especially in difficult situations.
Celebration
Customer Care Week, is observed globally by businesses or corporate entities to appreciate the contributions of their customers to their growth.
Korle Bu’s week-long celebration has been christened ‘A Good Customer Service, the Backbone of Quality Health Care’, and aimed at equipping staff with the best ways to communicate effectively with patients and their relatives.
Activities lined up for the celebration include a training session for the staff, free health screening and visitation of inpatients by central management of the hospital.
Customer care
Mr Salifu explained that the paradigm was shifting to a more patient-centred system, as patients now had options to choose from.
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“It is, therefore, imperative for health professionals to sharpen their skills in terms of providing the best care to patients so as not to lose out in competition,” he said.
He said the hospital had provided a customer service unit at six of its departments, and urged customers to send their issues to the centre and not run to the media.
The Chief Executive Officer of the hospital, Mr Daniel Asare, touched on the enormity of the workload on the health workers, saying out of the 1,500 daily outpatient department (OPD) attendance at the hospital, 250 were admitted daily.
“Though we are over-burdened, the expectation of patients is huge. This is why our core mandate as healthcare providers is to make sure the “patients come first all the time,” Mr Asare said.
Negative culture in health
The Quality Improvement Manager of the hospital, Mr Elom Hillary, urged staff to eschew negative practices and always show compassion to patients.
He asked them to create an atmosphere of trust, love and compassion in the course of their work.