Minister of Health Sylvia Masebo says the government is set to address issues of doctors and other health workers engaging in private jobs at the expense of performing duties they were employed for.
Ms Masebo said the trend of health practitioners having more than one Job is compromising quality service delivery in the health sectors hence the need for the government to look into the issue.
The Minister said during a thanksgiving service held at the United Church of Zambia (UCZ) St Andrews to commemorate International Nurses’ Day.
Ms Masebo said she is going to table the issue of health workers engaging in private jobs to the cabinet office in Lusaka to see how best the issue can be addressed and ensure that all people benefited.
She said the majority of the doctors were not having one job but that they were having a lot of jobs, the thing which had contributed to people not getting a service.
“I will take this issue to the cabinet whether to have a doctor or health worker doing more than one job. This needs to be resolved, there are so many ways to have this matter addressed like increasing the salary,” she said.
And Ms Masebo says the government this year will promote practitioners that upgraded their qualifications to the next level using this year’s budgets which was supposed to go towards employing 3000.
She added that the Government was going to ensure that more nurses are employed to curb the current trend where family members were the ones taking care of their patients.
She has commended the nurses for the service they are rendering to the Zambians and has urged them to continue working with the Government to address some of the challenges they were facing.
Zambia Union of Nurses Organisation (ZUNO) president Tisa Chipunda has urged the Government and stakeholders in the health sector to invest in nursing education and training as well as create policies that will promote a healthy work environment.
Ms Chiponda further urged the Government to scale up the recruitment and promotions process for 2023 nurses and midwife personnel for effective health service delivery.
“Investing in nursing and health care can lead to significant benefits for individuals, communities and be able to strengthen and sustain a skilled and competent workforce,” she said.
Nursing and Midwifery Council of Zambia chairperson Patricia Mukwita said this year’s theme resonated so well with the council’s quest to improve the quality of training nurse’s and practice not only to protect the public from unsafe practice but also to preserve the future and relevance of the nursing profession.
Ms Mukwita said the council had put in place measures aimed at improving the profession of nurses and midwifery.
She expressed concern with the growing gap in the clinical skills of practitioners saying the council would address the challenge by strengthening enforcement of the set of standards of the profession and training to ensure only competent nurses and midwives graduated as practitioners.
The day was being commemorated under the theme ‘our nurses, our future’.