The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

STAFFING concerns and a push for residents to access clinics prompted the Public Hospitals Authority’s advice over the weekend that people only visit Princess Margaret Hospital’s emergency section for emergencies.

“This is due to not only staffing but ensuring that patients who do not have emergencies utilise the clinics in an effort to ensure the emergency room is not overburdened with non-emergency cases while in the small interim space while the main department is under renovation,” PHA Managing Director Dr Aubynette Rolle said yesterday.

In a Friday notice, the authority encouraged non-emergency patients to contact their primary care physician or utilise community clinics for care.

PHA said a medical emergency is an acute injury or illness that poses an immediate risk to a person’s life or long-term health –– “sometimes referred to as a situation risking ‘life or limb’.”

Last week, Bahamas Nurses Union President Muriel Lightbourn said nurses considered walking off the job on Wednesday amid poor working conditions at PMH.

“At Accident and Emergency right now, it’s overcrowding,” she said. “You have almost 60 patients waiting to find a bed in the hospital, and who knows when you triple that with gunshot wounds, stab wounds, and you have people coming in with stroke and heat exhaustion.”

“Like one of the nurses says, Ms Lightbourn, I don’t even have to go outside to get heat exhaustion, I get it right in here, that’s how hot it is.

In June, Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis toured PMH and said the crisis there is subsiding.