Doctors and Nurses together with other health workers in the various public health institutions in Ghana will soon be restricted from using their personal mobile handsets during working hours.
This comes in the wake of the Ghana Health Service’s (GHS) receipt of negative feedback from patients patronizing, especially, public health care institutions in the country.
Instead of relying on their mobile handsets to communicate, the country’s Health Regulator says it will make provision for intercom systems at the various health facilities for effective communication.
In a statement issued to the press and copied to The Coastal Eye, the Director-General of GHS, Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare, said his outfit has mapped out a policy to carry out the ban on the use of mobile phones among health workers during working hours.
The decision, he believed, will bring sanity into the health system and also ensure efficient delivery of quality health care to patients across the country.
Although the regulator’s decision on the use of the mobile phone by health workers was yet to be implemented, those likely to be affected have started raising red flags on the proposed ban claiming that it would have an adverse impact on some health practitioners who attend to emergency cases.
According to Samuel Arthur, a community health advocate, the decision by the GHS was a misplaced priority and therefore not feasible.
Rather, he opined that the solution to the problem was the proper supervision by officials of the human resources at their disposal.
By Mercy Obeng-Dapaah
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