Senior staff at Eerste River Hospital say they are being made to sign an apartheid-style “declaration of secrecy” document.
|||Senior staff at Eerste River Hospital say they are being made to sign an “apartheid-style declaration of secrecy” document following media reports that made public the hospital’s troubles recently.
Staff who spoke to the Cape Argus on condition of anonymity said their workplace had become horrendous for not only patients, but doctors and nurses, who worked under constant fear and felt “spied upon” by senior managers. The staff said the management had elevated their “bullying tactics and operated the hospital like a military base”, threatening to bug their phone lines and forcing staff to sign secret documents.
A staff member described the past week as the “most difficult” for staff after the hospital’s acting chief executive told staff that he had drawn up charge sheets for those that did not toe the line and who associated with fired managers who leaked the hospital’s affairs to the media.
“The atmosphere at the hospital has gone really bad. It has gone from subtle threatening to an outright barrage of victimisation. Our Friday meetings, which are meant to discuss the hospital’s clinical management and outcomes, have been turned into forums to intimidate staff.
“We are constantly told that ‘we are watching you, you are not to speak up, we will fire you’, and time and time again we are told that the vendetta against the fired managers and the ‘wrath that has fallen on them will be dealt out in equal measure to anyone who does not abide (by the rules)’.
“People are so fearful of senior management that the work morale has dropped and standards are getting poorer… things have really got worse for everyone,” she said.
The hospital came under the spotlight recently after a senior doctor went public with what he labelled as a “gross violation of patient rights”.
The former head of the hospital’s trauma unit claimed that patients were dying of avoidable complications and that others had to sleep on the floor, while those with infectious diseases shared space with general patients. The former head of that hospital’s trauma unit, who has since taken the department to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration for unfair dismissal, said he had been targeted by the management after he raised questions about a lack of clinical governance.
He left the hospital in August after his contract was terminated when it was deemed “irregular” following the translation of certain posts into specialist posts in line with the Occupation Specific Dispensation.
The department said the doctor’s contract had been irregular as he was employed by his brother, who was the hospital CEO at the time.
He was in the post for 18 months.
Apart from being threatened, staff also allege that they were forced to sign a “declaration of secrecy” to keep all information, good or bad, within the hospital confines.
The document, which the management told staff was in line with the Protection of Information Act of 1982, was given to all middle and senior managers. It states that anyone revealing information shall be guilty of an offence. This act is the precursor to the controversial Protection of State Informational Bill which the government is trying to pass into law.
“I fully concur with a confidentiality document, but to produce a secrecy document referring to an act formulated at the height of apartheid implicitly for military use seems inappropriate. Why are doctors required to sign this?” asked a staffer who recently had her contract terminated as “irregular”.
But Faiza Steyn, spokeswoman for the department, defended the document as a normal policy document.
“This document is a standard Human Resources policy document which provides for maintenance of confidentiality in the recruitment and selection process which is actually a standard type of document used in most corporates and such environments,” she said.
Staffers claimed one of the issues they were not allowed to question was the alleged over-expenditure of about R15 million which the hospital incurred last year. Another was the firing of various staff members whose contracts were deemed “irregular” by the department.
Steyn admitted that there was an overspend by the hospital, but said this had been incurred as a result of 25 additional beds, which were critically needed to alleviate overcrowding.
Steyn said the discontinued posts had been “irregularly” created against those of medical officer positions.
She denied that staff were being threatened, saying the department had not received any complaints from staff about alleged bullying.
sipokazi.fokazi@inl.co.za
Cape Argus