Medical ethical practice is at its lowest ebb

Koforidua, June 8, GNA - Dr Larbi Addo, the Deputy Director in-charge of clinical care in the Eastern Region, has said medical practice in the country was witnessing its worst professional practice since independence.

He expressed regret that the country was recording worst medical practices, worst abuse of professional ethics and high mortality rate at a time when many young people were entering the profession. Dr Addo blamed the situation on the environment in which many medical practitioners had their training, where they had their attachment and the attitude of medical practitioners to their profession.

He appealed to young medical practitioners to aspire to be the best and look for excellence and not to be just ordinary practitioners. Dr Addo was delivering an address at an orientation workshop for senior house officers and house officers at the Eastern Regional Hospital, Koforidua.

He said the profession required that one remained very vigilante and advised the young doctors to be ready to support each other and continue to learn because even the elderly ones in the profession could not claim to know it all.

Dr Addo said, it was wrong for a medical officer to come to hospital and "say today I will look at 10 or 20 patients and then walk away and leave the rest of the patients behind". "Whom do you leave the patient for? The hospital was made to save lives and so when people are sick and they arrive at the hospital, they have to be cared for to survive."

The Human Resource Manager of the Hospital, Mr Abraham B. O. Awuah, said since 2005 the hospital had been training house officers from the various medical school in the country.