Support service systems are other services rendered in the hospital that are essential, besides the nursing services. These are services like food, portering, transport, cleaning, clerical and others.
One of the participants felt that some of the support service systems did not work collaboratively with the nurses. They cited that some of the support service staff had diplomas or university degrees; that they are qualified individuals, but because of the
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lack of jobs they ended up applying for these service jobs just to earn income, though their interest was not in these services. They indicated that some came just to have employment exposure, yet they were neither satisfied with the income, nor with the services that they were supposed to be rendering. Even the environment is not conducive to them. Thus they end up having no enthusiasm. These are discussed in the following categories:
3.2.4.1 Porters are not enthusiastic about their job.
Porters are employed to assist in transferring patients from bed to stretcher, or the other way round; and the transporting of patients to and from other areas of treatment like X-rays, or theatre. They are allocated to different wards, or have a pool where they can be found and called to perform their job.
The participants also indicated that there was ineffective governance of this category of staff. The porters deliberately did not render their duties efficiently and did not account to anyone. There was no control over the meeting times for union members and representatives. The participant therefore expressed the following:
“You must take the staff nurse out of their jobs like dressings to do porters’ job. The porters are leaving the ward and go to the meetings meanwhile in the wards their work is waiting. They attend the meeting for long hours. While in the wards work is not being done so the nurses must do their jobs. The patient does not come first now”.
“There is no control because of these unions’ many meetings to attend. The porters must leave the ward and go to the meetings meanwhile in the wards their work is waiting. And it was still early in the morning and the person has reported for the duty and is going to be paid for the day according to his scope of practise but he is not here he is in the union meeting.”
According to some of the participants the portering system is ineffective. Some of the nurses had to beg porters to do their work. Most of the nurses reported that they battle to work with most of the porters, as the porters did not avail themselves for their job. The porters are nowhere to be found and they did not have good
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communication skills. The porters were not doing their work as they were supposed to do. That caused the nurses to get exhausted, because they were overworked, and behind with their scheduled work. The following extracts are from remarks expressed by various participants regarding portering services:
“Nurses have to fight or beg with the porters for porters to do their job…”
“Porters are lazy really even if they are on duty. It is worse now with this allocation of porters into the wards because there is only one porter in each ward which it means if the porter is not there the nurses must do porters’ job the wards are busy every day”
“The female porters they disappear. They really disappear. The porters were working hand in hand with the nurses in transporting of the patient to and from the other disciplines. There were no female porters that time. It was only males they were responsible one will just call them from their pool telephone number and they will come immediately. There was no porter allocation they were responsible they would respond as soon as possible to the ward calls.”
3.2.4.2 General Assistants sometimes do not work properly.
General assistants are the staff members employed to look after the hygiene of the hospital. Patients are entitled to a clean environment. It is reported that there are other categories too, like the cleaning staff, who are contributing to the decline in the quality of patient care.
It was indicated by some of the participants that cleanliness is a problem in some areas of the hospital. As a result it was of concern to the nursing staff as they understood clearly the importance of environmental hygiene to the quality of patient care, hence the following excerpt:
“General assistant have to keep the wards clean at all times to prevent nosocomial infections that can delay patient progress and results in hospital long stay.”
“If the environment around the patient is not hygienic and conducive it is going to also compromise the patients’ quality of care, healing and recovery of the patient”
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