Oduman Polyclinic: How Patients, Families suffer Horrific Abuses from Nurses

DAILY Analyst can report that patients who go to Oduman Polyclinic in the Ga West Municipal Assembly in the Greater Accra Region for health care suffer verbal abuses and harassment.

This ill-treatment and dastardly act which has become the order of the day at the Oduman Polyclinic is perpetuated by nurses who are expected to protect and show compassion on patients and users of the facility.

The nurses, DAILY Analyst understands, verbally abuse patients, often telling them to shut up, as well as handling them in a rough and aggressive manner, all in the full glare of the public.

In fact, this paper gathered that these so-called nurses at the government health facility have gained notoriety for hurling insults on patients, to the extent that sometimes they manhandle patients. And what they hate most is for their shameful actions to be questioned.

Indeed DAILY Analyst was reliable informed that patients were not the only ones who were verbally harassed, but then their family members and friends who accompany them.

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And not even a threat from some of the patients or their families to report the nurses to the authorities compels them to show remorse and apologise.
“You can report us to even President Akufo-Addo we don’t care! At the end of the month, we will draw our salaries,” this is the kind of response given to patients or users of the facility who threaten to report the behaviours of the nurses, our reporter was told.

In fact, that rather spurs these disrespectful nurses on to abuse the patients and their families the more.

It is as if these nurses are only in the profession to make money and that is all!
There are even instances where these nurses give drugs to family members or friends to administer on their patients.

According to residents in Oduman, the actions of the nurses at Oduman Polyclinic have damaged patients’ trust, with many of them vowing not to set foot there again.

Shockingly, this reporter discovered that senior medical practitioners including doctors, Physical Assistants (PAs) allow such ill-treatments at the facility to go unchecked.

A development that drew the conclusion that these senior medical practitioners were in support of the cruel behaviours of the nurses.

“If the explanation above is not the case, then why will a PA at Oduman Polyclinic stand and do nothing when nurses throw insults at patients including their family members and friends who visit the facility?, a father of a patient, Mr Dennis Yeboah, who has been a victim of verbal attacks at the polyclinic asked, while recounting his ordeal to DAILY Analyst.

According to him, the ordeals that patients go through at the Oduman Polyclinic are enough to send them (patients) to their graves.

“For me, I have resolved never to send any of my children to Oduman Polyclinic.
…Equally I have advised many of my relatives, friends and family members not to go to Oduman Polyclinic,” a furious looking Mr Yeboah said.

Our reporter (Ato Keelson) was even a witness to a situation where a nurse asked the father of a sick daughter to insert a paracetamol suppository into the anus of the little girl.

And as the father of this sick patient was struggling to insert the drug, the nurse did not make any attempt to help but rather shouted at him to the dismay of this reporter.

Some of the youth who spoke with DAILY Analyst in Oduman, Manhean and Afoaman who visit the facility threatened to storm there and also “teach these abusive nurses some lessons.”

Consequently, they warned that if the authorities will not act, then they will also not sit on the fence and allow such impunity to go unchecked.
Meanwhile, some of residents, particularly in Oduman, have called on the Ministry of Health to quickly act on the matter before it gets out of hand.

Until 2021, Oduman Polyclinic was known as Oduman Health Centre. However, one cannot tell whether the upgrade to a polyclinic is what was accounting for this phenomenon.

Source: Ato Keelson || Daily Analyst