Nehawu says there's need to improve conditions

THE National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union (Nehawu) says the government is to blame if nurses have bad attitudes towards patients.

The union was responding to President Jacob Zuma's call on nurses on Tuesday at the National Nursing Summit in Sandton, Johannesburg, to stop treating patients like nuisances.

"The era of the rude, uncaring and impatient civil servant or nurse must be a thing of the past. At times public servants think they are doing members of the public a favour, when in fact they are providing services that citizens are entitled to," Zuma said.

Nehawu's Sizwe Pamla said the union supported Zuma's call on nurses to deliver quality service and admitted that patients who use public hospitals and clinics sometimes got "shabby treatment".

But he said disheartened workers could not deliver quality services.

Pamla blamed the "government's ill-informed policies", including outsourcing, privatisation, poor pay and failure to fill vacant posts.

"It is unacceptable that more managers than nurses and doctors have been hired over the last 10 years, especially since most health institutions are poorly managed and are malfunctioning.

"While nurses have a responsibility to serve and treat members of the public with respect, we also expect their working conditions to be closely scrutinised at this summit and improved," he said.

"We do agree that it is the constitutional right of citizens to be treated well by public servants.

He said the lives of nurses would be easier if government employed more community health workers at primary health care level.

"We respect that it is their right but nurses also need to be compensated properly in the process," Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven said on Tuesday.