No doctors at TTH emergency department

Investigations conducted reveal that the emergency department of the Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH) lacks qualified emergency physicians.

The hospital currently has medical officers and they are persons who have finished their housemanship and are working.

However, the emergency physician is a specialty on its own and so not everyone who has completed his or her housemanship can work at the department.

The hospital has lately recorded some death cases and families are blaming the facility for the cause of death of their relatives.

The Tamale Teaching Hospital currently has only one doctor at the emergency department, and it is obvious that the department cannot operate with one person.

When DAILY GUIDE visited the facility at night, personnel on duty who spoke on condition of anonymity said,

“When the doctor works from morning 6:00am to 6:00pm, he cannot properly take care of a patient in that tired state so the department will need more than one doctor.”

They added that before someone can work at the emergency department, “you will need to be trained on practical lifesaving interventions, meaning if a patient is sent to the emergency department and the doctor is not available, the person is likely to die.”

At least 10 doctors are supposed to be at the department 24 hours throughout the week to provide senior level intervention measures.

A source at the facility told DAILY GUIDE that the department lacks defibrillators with pacer, portable ventilators, portable ultrasound, portable oxygen cylinders, cardiac monitors, intubation kit and emergency drugs.

Drugs that are used to stop convulsion are sometimes bought outside the department by patients to save their lives, the paper discovered.

Efforts to reach the hospital authorities proved futile.