A total of 113 members of staff at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals received awards on Friday at the institution for outstanding customer service.
By Kudakwashe Pembere
These included clinical and non-clinical staff at the hospital including security from loss control, accountants, IT staff, nurses, doctors, general hands to mention but the few. Some of the notable recipients of awards included Pediatrician Dr Azza Mashumba as well as the hospital’s public relations officer Mr Linos Dhire.
Officiating the awards ceremony, Health and Child Care Minister Dr Obadiah Moyo said the awards were meant to sieve through the corrupt health workers and the diligent ones.
Customer care is important because we will also be looking at corruption. Corruption can happen without us not realizing it. While we are working with our customers, we say some issues, we do some issues but not realizing we are being corrupt. Staff like blackmailing the patients. Its corruption.
“I have had so many patients who have come to me and start complaining. At the end of their complaints they end up by saying please don’t say this elsewhere because our relative might not survive. It will be an element of blackmail, leading to corruption. So we really have to be careful. It’s not just nurses. It’s all health workers, customer care is for all health workers. The person who knows more about the patient is not the doctor,” he said.
He added, “It’s on the ward, it’s the cleaners. They know every tiny detail. The nurses will be relaxing in their duty room. So I would pass through their rooms surprisingly seeing them near the heater. So we must be careful with corruption. In general we must fight corruption by all means. I was in Nyanga yesterday with the Private Hospitals Association and I told them that we must resist corruption.”
The Minister said that the awards displayed the union of customer care principles and patient care.
The institution’s deputy board chair Dr Mvududu said despite the importance of availability of medicines, the health workers are often ignored.
“Today at Parirenyatwa Hospital we celebrate a rare component of service delivery in the public healthcare system. Talk has been availability of drugs, hospital infrastructure and equipment but forgetting the role paid by the human element of the whole system. We believe that while the availability of drugs is critical, drugs administered by a rude irresponsible staff with poor communication skills can be recipe for disaster,” he said.
The awards were mooted in March this year and a total of 1 000 staff from the hospital participated.
“Question might be why the awards. We did these awards because we cannot afford the cost of poor service quality. Honorable Minister, the process was initiated in March this year and the roadmap with three main components was agreed upon. Three critical elements agreed upon were the customer service training.
“The second process was about the nomination process itself where data was collected and analysed. Thirdly, the presentation of results. The training was designed to make sure that every employee here had customer service training to understand what customer service entails. Secondly it was done to prepare everyone for the nomination process. In other words everyone is going to be actively involved in selecting those celebrating,” said Dr Nkosi