KNYSNA NEWS - The Knysna Provincial Hospital has acknowledged that its emergency centre is overburdened, especially after hours. This comes after some patients who have gone for treatment at the hospital recently complained about the hospital's services, saying they had to wait long hours before being attended to.

Hospital overburdened

This week, the Western Cape Department of Health and Wellness' communications officer, Nadia Ferreira, said they are putting measures in place to improve the services.

"Unfortunately, the hospital is the only emergency centre in Knysna, Bitou and surrounding areas that is offering after-hours services to people seeking urgent and life-threatening care," she explained.

Patients triaged

She said patients who come to the emergency centre will be triaged based on the assessment by the hospital healthcare workers and the treatment required.

 The hospital staff will attend to more life-threatening cases first, which depends on the number of patients requiring urgent care, which impacts the waiting time.

People who are stable and triaged as non-life-threatening will receive treatment, but their waiting time will be affected.

"We value feedback from our patients accessing care, and we are committed to listening to your concerns, which will assist us in finding ways to improve our healthcare services.

"We encourage you to use our complaints channels by requesting to speak to the facility manager, night matron, or the quality assurance manager."

Recent incident

An unhappy Mutchere Malgas said he recently took his daughter to the hospital. They waited here from 18:00 and she was only attended to at 07:00 the next morning.

"I asked the doctor why we haven't been helped yet, then I was told that there was only one doctor in the whole building. My daughter, who is two years old, was in pain because there was something stuck in her ear."

The increasing population and service demands have been noted as one of the contributing factors to the challenges faced by the hospital.

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