The North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCHRA) has said it has im­ple­ment­ed a ro­ta­tion sys­tem for doc­tors at the Cou­va hos­pi­tal to pre­vent burnout.

The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) had ear­li­er claimed that the NCRHA was re­mov­ing “gen­er­als” from the hos­pi­tal at a time when they were need­ed the most, list­ing five doc­tors af­fect­ed by the move.

A state­ment by the NCRHA said that the Med­ical Chief of Staff at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal, Dr Don Mar­tin re­peat­ed­ly re­quest­ed of the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the NCRHA, Davlin Thomas, that a sys­tem of ro­ta­tion be im­ple­ment­ed so that doc­tors at the fa­cil­i­ty were giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to rest, hav­ing been work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly at the COVID-19 fa­cil­i­ty for over a year.

“The re­quest, which was made ap­prox­i­mate­ly two weeks ago, was fol­lowed by a meet­ing with Di­rec­tor of Health (NCRHA), Dr Malachy Ojuro where Dr Mar­tin again ex­pres­sive­ly re­it­er­at­ed that doc­tors should be ro­tat­ed and rein­te­grat­ed in­to the par­al­lel sys­tem to pre­vent burnout which he felt was ram­pant amongst the doc­tors at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal, es­pe­cial­ly with the in­creas­ing in­take for pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es,” the state­ment said.

The state­ment said that sub­se­quent to this, an­oth­er dis­cus­sion was held with the CEO of the NCRHA, and the ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team made the de­ci­sion to fa­cil­i­tate the ap­peal to en­sure that doc­tors at the fa­cil­i­ty were ro­tat­ed to mit­i­gate against the ef­fects of fa­tigue on pa­tient care. Ac­cord­ing to Di­rec­tor of Health, Dr Ojuro, ro­ta­tion among doc­tor staff is a com­mon prac­tice at the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty in all its oth­er ar­eas and this has be­come par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant giv­en the ris­ing num­bers and the in­creas­ing de­mands.

“The NCRHA is in­ten­tion­al about putting sys­tems in place to avoid burnout, es­pe­cial­ly in high de­mand ar­eas, so we have con­sis­tent­ly mon­i­tored and main­tained ro­ta­tions, in­clud­ing psy­chi­a­trists and psy­chol­o­gists with­in the sys­tem who ad­vise us reg­u­lar­ly. This is not just for the ben­e­fit of our doc­tors. The ben­e­fits of en­sur­ing our doc­tors are well rest­ed al­so re­dound to the over­all pa­tient care ex­pe­ri­ence and that is our ma­jor ob­jec­tive – en­sur­ing that pa­tients re­ceive the best pos­si­ble care,” Dr Ojuro stat­ed.

Mean­while, Thomas said the NCRHA is cur­rent­ly en­gag­ing the lo­gis­tics and im­ple­men­ta­tion works to com­mis­sion and open the field hos­pi­tal at the Cou­va hos­pi­tal, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly en­gag­ing the vac­cine roll­out of the Sinopharm vac­cine to­day.

“We have every rea­son to be­lieve that every­thing will go as planned,” he said.