TWELVE hours – that's how long some patients have to wait to be warded at the University Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC).
And this is despite having already been scheduled for surgery.
This sorry state of affairs has placed the hospital in a vulnerable position – it is receiving brickbats from patients and the public, with one patient claiming he had to wait almost 12 hours to be warded. He was supposed to undergo surgery the next day.
When The Malay Mail visited UMMC, we discovered the hospital suffers from two pressing problems - it lacks beds, and nurses.
Currently, there are 1,126 beds available at the hospital but only 925 can be used because there are not enough nurses to man operations at full capacity.
“We can't simply add more beds without a corresponding increase in our staff nurses. At the moment, we have 1,600 permanent staff nurses but we need another 400 more,” UMMC director Datuk Dr Ikram Shah told The Paper That Cares.
He said UMMC had asked for the extra nurses two years ago but the Public Service Department had apparently postponed the allocation.
“The ratio of staff nurses for each patient depends on their condition. For critical patients, the ratio is one nurse per patient. At each ward, there are 41 staff nurses and two charge nurses (nursing sisters) working on shifts.”
The hospital receives roughly one million patients every year, with an average of 3,000 attended to daily, including outpatients.
Dr Ikram said another contributing factor to the space constraint is the delay in discharging patients from the wards.
“Patients have to undergo precise medical check-ups before they can be discharged. And some of them have to wait for their family members to pick them up.”
He said there were cases when patients at the accident and emergency room had to stay there for more than a day before they could be admitted.
"However, it still depends on their condition. If they have been categorised as critical, their entry to the ward would be accelerated.”
Dr Ikram added: “We also have some foreign patients without passports. We are unable to discharge them without approval from the authorities.”
He said to partially overcome this problem, the UMMC management has taken to send some local patients home by taxi after informing their family members. “This way, more beds would be made available for new patients.”
UMMC is one of three hospitals under the purview of the Higher Education Ministry. The other two are Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia.
Upon learning that UMMC was in a quandary, The Malay Mail contacted the ministry which prompted them to make an immediate visit to the hospital.
HREE hours after The Malay Mail contacted the Higher Education Ministry to alert them of UMMC's bed-and-nurse shortage, its secretary-general Datuk Ab Rahim Md Nor made a surprise visit to the hospital.
We learnt about this when our reported bumped into him at the hospital's accident and emergency unit at around 6pm. He was walking around with his notebook while being accompanied by UMMC director Datuk Dr Ikram Shah Ismail.
During the visit, Ab Rahim was given a personal briefing on the real situation at the hospital.
“All the findings will be presented to the Higher Education Minister Datuk Khalid Nordin,” he promised The Paper That Cares.He added that RM1 billion had been allocated for hospitals under the ministry in the 10th Malaysia Plan, but priority for allocation of funds would focus on areas most critically needed.
SOME patients have had to wait almost 12 hours before being warded despite being scheduled to have surgery the next day.
One such patient was S. Selvanayagam, 59, who said he had to wait till 8.30pm just to be given a bed. "I was supposed to undergo surgery the next morning and I was here since 8.15am.
"The UMMC staff were supposed to arrange for a bed. But, I'm lucky as my condition was not as bad as other patients."
His disappointed son, who declined to be named, complained: "I had to accompany my dad and left work just to make sure nothing happened to him until he was warded."
Another 69-year-old woman who had been scheduled for heart surgery expressed surprise that she was not given priority. Her son, identifying himself only as Razak, claimed to have been told by the staff nurse that his mother would have to wait at the hospital for an available bed or come back later in the evening.
"I'm worried about my mother's condition as she was already prepared for the surgery. With the long wait for a ward bed, I'm sure she was extra stressed."
When asked, The Malay Mail was told by the staff nurse at the counter there was a serious shortage of ward beds at UMMC.
"Normally, 60 to 70 patients register with us daily for surgery confirmed for the next day." Due to the ward bed shortage, she said only patients in life-and-death situations would be given priority for available beds.
Another patient simply shrugged her shoulders and described the situation at UMMC as "normal" as it was her second time having surgery here.
"I'm still grateful because as soon as I was warded the last time round, the doctor and staff nurses treated me well."
At the UMMC cafe, we met a patient identified only as Lim who had come for post-surgery treatment. He said,"After the operation on my left eye in July last year, I had to wait until evening before I could be discharged from the ward.
"I asked them why I was being discharged so late and they told me it was normal procedure. I do think such a delay contributes to the lack of beds.
