We frown at extortion, harassment of patients, says CMD

The management of Barau Dikko Teaching Hospital says it does not take allegations of extortion and harassment of patients lightly.

Dr. Abdukadir Tabari disclosed this in an interview with the newsmen on Monday in Kaduna.

The disclosure followed complaints from certain quarters about alleged unprofessional practices of extortion and harassment of patients by nurses and midwives at the hospital.

Tabari said, ”Whoever may have been involved in the unfortunate practices may have done it without the knowledge of the management.

“Such staff may have escaped our strategies and punitive mechanisms in place to check and apprehend them.

“Payments are made to the cashier, and one is issued a receipt, and luckily, we use electronic medical records in the hospital, whereby the exact payment you make, the date, and the time whoever collected that payment is entered and recorded.

“If you did not go through that process, please, I am calling on the general public to raise an alarm.

“We have a SERVICOM Contact telephone number: 08152873755; please call that number immediately.”

On professionalism, the CMD said every staff member in the teaching hospital was a professional in his or her own right, brought to serve the people appropriately.

He said, “Whenever there is an issue of unprofessional conduct from any staff and a patient feels mismanaged, we have SERVICOM always willing to take related matters up.”

Tabari said that the hospital has a mechanism where it disciplines the professional misconduct of any member of staff.

He said, ”We have, on a daily basis, what we call QA-QI, which is the Quality Assurance and Quality Improvement Committee, that goes round to ensure that the staff perform their duties professionally and diligently, whereas the SERVICOM is also there to ensure that the patients are served right.

“We have had the cause to dismiss staff that were caught extorting patients and equally disciplined appropriately, a doctor in the same regard.

“In the last four years, we have had the cause to dismiss about three staff members.

“You should know that before you dismiss a staff member, there are steps to be taken, including the initial issuance of a query, and when you are not satisfied with the response, you set up a committee, be it a junior or senior staff discipline committee.

“It is an ongoing process, as whoever is found engaged in professional misconduct will be punished according to the provisions of the law.”