Long emergency queue ordeal for Salmaniya Medical Complex patients

TDT | Manama                                                             

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Long queues are allegedly creating an unending ordeal for patients at the Kingdom’s largest hospital. Sources say some patients had to wait up to five hours at Salmaniya Medical Complex (SMC) emergency unit where a doctor attended the case.

The sources point out that the waiting periods are quite longer during the nights, attributing the crisis to shortage of adequate staff at the unit. “Two days before, I took a patient who suffered from serious back pain to the SMC emergency unit. He was in a miserable condition, which is hard to describe, unable to walk or sit. I must say that the nurses and the staff at the unit were very caring and cooperative, but the queue to reach the doctor was too long, worsening the predicament,” a source told The Daily Tribune.

“We had to wait nearly six hours to reach the doctor, who seemed heavily exhausted after attending many patients in a stretch. During this waiting period, we could see many serious patients coming in, and joining the queue although they needed urgent attention,” he explained. On the flip side, another source said one major reason behind the long queues are non-emergency patients who report at the unit as emergency patients, irresponsibly creating a burden on the system.

The Daily Tribune earlier reported about a special team being constituted at SMC to handle accident and emergency cases. The initiative is part of the policy being implemented across public health institutions to upgrade the existing health system in the Kingdom and is also aimed at improving the overall treatment experience of both citizens and residents.

The Accident and Emergency Department at Salmaniya Medical Complex receives 1,300 patients everyday, according to a study conducted by the Ministry of Health. This comes amidst an ongoing project to upgrade the Accident and Emergency Department, where the capacity will be raised from the current 80 beds to 123 beds. The study found that the patient satisfaction at the Accident and Emergency Department stood at 80 per cent, highlighting the great infrastructure, facilities and services offered.

As part of upgrading initiatives, five new rooms will be created at the department for receiving patients; eight rooms to deal with non-urgent cases and three rooms exclusively for offering initial treatments. SMC has a busy Accident and Emergency department, which are intended to help people who have had trauma or acute surgical or medical problems.

The Emergency Medical Services was developed in 1985 within the Department of Accident and Emergency at Salmaniya Medical Center to provide pre-hospital emergency medical care services to the sick and injured patients by Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT), paramedics, at the sense and during transportation to the hospital. Acute emergency cases handled at the hospital include road traffic accidents, cardiac cases, acute respiratory conditions, all trauma cases, burns cases, psychiatry cases and neonatal care.