Hospital implements new staff entry measures in bid to block COVID

Queen Elizabeth Hospital officials, fearful that the island’s lone public general hospital could be overrun by COVID-19 sufferers and be forced to ration health care, moved quickly Wednesday to introduce new restrictions and internal guidelines.

The restrictions led to long queues of staff members seeking entry into the hospital and triggered a viral video showing angry and frustrated workers. The hospital has already experienced outbreaks of the viral illness, particularly among the kitchen and security staff.

In response, QEH executive chairman Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland revealed on Thursday that management will be reviewing its policy on absenteeism to try to stop employees from coming to work when they are sick but fear losing a day’s pay.

“We are going to look at our policies around absenteeism to make sure people do not come to work unwell because they fear they would lose a day’s pay.” Bynoe-Sutherland told Barbados TODAY. “That’s part of it. Sometimes people come to work when they are unwell because they don’t want to be absent.  So we have to do some positive reinforcement of the importance of sharing information about their state of health and any risks they have been exposed to in the community,”

She said the absenteeism rule is part of a series of alternative measures agreed to by the board after the implementation of what she described as a disruptive screening initiative on Wednesday at the entrance to the hospital for staff reporting for duty resulting in a serious backup outside the building.

In an earlier statement, Bynoe-Sutherland said: “The third wave of the pandemic has the potential to seriously impact the patient and staff of our lone tertiary health institution. Our management team has been exploring a number of initiatives to keep the hospital from being overwhelmed by COVID outbreaks. One attempt was initiated yesterday with poor outcomes as seen in the video circulated.

“Long lines were experienced trying to enter the facility by having staff go through a questionnaire. The board met last night and evaluated the initiative and determined that it was too disruptive. We have immediately discontinued the initiative and recommended that alternative measures be implemented at the department level to ensure staff do not start work unwell or do notify us of higher risk contacts at home or in the community.”

The hospital boss insisted that it should not be so stressful to enter the workplace and apologized for the inconvenience experienced by staff as she sought to focus on the hospital’s goal of keeping staff and patients safe.

In a separate interview with Barbados TODAY she disclosed that another initiative in which employees and their supervisors will consult on their health status every day at the departmental level before starting to work is in the works.

“We are also going to do a certification by all staff that they are familiar with the mask mandate,” said Bynoe-Sutherland. We are a mandatory mask-wearing facility; and that they are aware of the COVID protocols and guidelines. So in other words, rather than trying to do screening before people come in, the board believes you should do it at the department level.

The developments drew the attention of the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW) which formulated its own recommendations as to what both management and staff could do to stem the spread of the virus within the 600-bed hospital of 2,500 total staff or about 800 on duty at any given time.

NUPW Acting General Secretary Wayne Walrond suggested an aggressive public relations programme within the QEH is a good place to start.

“Some intensive public education, whether you do videos with staff, whether you send stuff to their email; something more aggressive in terms of the PR,” Walrond told Barbados TODAY. “Hold different sessions with different groups and say ‘look, we have a checklist, we give everybody a copy. At this stage, if you find you wake up with a fever, you find you are coughing. This is the checklist, so you report to your supervisor or call in. You get a day grace period, you get a day administrative leave if you are coughing, and if it disappears the next day you come in.”

The checklist would also allow workers to take reasonable action which could lead to PCR testing, he suggested.

Walrond said: “I know it is a complicated thing, but at the end of the day, it lends to honesty and disclosure of information. But you can use the checklist to go through every department and discuss every conceivable circumstance that could arise and how you could react; and if you are given the grace period to take that day off and monitor the particular situation and there would be no recrimination in terms of loss of pay.”

But the union leader acknowledged the grace period could also lead to possible abuse by employees.

“But then that leads to another side where the employer would not want it to be either misused or abused,” said the union leader. “So at the end of the day, all comes down to honesty, the openness of information and being responsible, given the seriousness of the COVID-19 spiral. So I think it is still going to ultimately rest on those factors.”
(emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb)