Haruna Abdulrashid
The management of Federal Teaching Hospital, Gombe under the leadership of Dr Yusuf Abdullahi, has made staff training and welfare as its priority.
This was stated in a statement from the information department of the health institution, adding that since assumption of office of the CMD, training and retraining of staff has formed part Abdullahi’s vision and priority.
PERISCOPE NIGERIA reports the CMD has also reiterated that staff development was among the important things he considered in his vision.
He expressed commitment towards ensuring that the hospital becomes staff friendly to all the patients.
The CMD said, “For the patients, staff and hospital management as a whole to be happy, the management ensured that staff training and retraining takes centre stage.
“We are mindful of the welfare of our staff and at the same time finding a way of reducing the burden of work on them in any way.”
Abdullahi noted that upon assumption of office as CMD, he had a meeting with all the medical staff unions involving the NMA, ARD and JOHESU and listened to all their challenges.
“One thing that I did was to include the unions leadership in the management, so that whatever the management is discussing aspects of the hospital in terms of development, plans and our challenges, they will be part of the decision making and this initiative has really helped in moving the hospital forward,” the CMD disclosed.
He further explained that, the outstanding salary owed by some of the staff from 2003, amounting to over 800 million were settled due to his intervention.
“We set a very strong committee, that created a strategy on how to solve the problem and the complaint was forwarded to the federal government in which the matter was addressed positively and we are able to clear all the outstandings the staff involved, now its history,” he said.
The CMD continued saying, “My second vision is, despite the limited resources l want to have a strategy for training of our staff, in healthcare delivery, without training and retraining, we can not progress, because the world is moving fast in terms of better health delivery.”
He stated that, the management of the hospital under his leadership has trained many of the staff despite paucity of funds. The strategies of retraining of the staff were divided into many categories and the staff are very much happy with the program.
“We also had the ability to establish additional two departments, Community Medicine and that of Family medicine, which has also streamlined the work rendered in the hospital,” the CMD added.
Abdullahi who said that the hospital was able to secure accreditation for training of resident Doctors both for the community medicine and family medicine, added that, accreditation status of the resident Doctors for the training of resident Doctors in the ENT department (Ear, Nose and Throat) unit of the hospital was also secured.
The CMD also said that the hospital was able to sustain and maintain all the accreditation processes of all the units in the hospital, including the laboratory, the surgery, obstetrics, among others.
He explained that some few years ego a request was forwarded to the Federal Government in terms of recruiting manpower for health, today this has resulted to the employment of a number of nurses and other staff that are capable and have really helped in reducing the burden of overwork on staff in the hospital.
“That has greatly increased efficiency and it also served as a welfare to the staff of the hospital.
“Welfare is not all about money, it’s about making an environment conducive for the staff and all the professionals to function effectively and we have greatly achieved immensely in order to maintain and sustain service delivery,” he said.
He said in order to address the problem of japa syndrome, the hospital has established schools in the hospital for the nurses and health information management, among others, “the establishment of the electronic medical record has also made our staff to be very friendly because everything is now at their fingertip, hence there’s no stress in how to deliver their work in terms of folder handling of missing documents and so many things.”
Dr Abdullahi who noted that the hospital has been expanded in the area of clinics, wards, renovations, added that the effort has made the staff to be very friendly and happy with the management of the hospital.
