Lack of doctors in A&E causes concern for Ajman residents

Hessa Ali, an Emirati trainee doctor, talks to a patient at Sheikh Khalifa Hospital in Ajman. Pawan Singh / The National

AJMAN // While the smallest emirate, Ajman, does have adequate healthcare facilities, it suffers from a lack of doctors, particularly at accident and emergency departments.

Residents say they need to travel to other emirates to get specialist treatment and to avoid long queues in A&E.

Jordanian accountant Bashar Mohammed has lived in Ajman for a year. “The services in government and private hospitals in Ajman are slow, especially at A&E departments, because of the shortage of the number of doctors,” the 35-year-old said.

“My wife is pregnant and I always take her to a hospital in Dubai. I do that because, when we go there, we enter instantly, with no need to wait.”

Hala Hassan, 30, a Jordanian housewife who lived in Abu Dhabi for four years before spending the past two years in Ajman, said there was no comparison between health services in the two emirates.

“The services in AD in terms of the ease in doing the procedures, organisation and the number of doctors is better than in Ajman.

“I never remember having to spend time waiting when I went to an A&E department there [in Abu Dhabi].”

Saleh Al Junaibi, director of Sheikh Khalifa Hospital in Ajman, admitted that the A&E department suffers from a lack of doctors, nurses and beds, but that the hospital was working to increase numbers and provide a better service to patients.

“There is a plan to expand the department and increase the medical staff. Each shift, there are two doctors and that’s good compared with two years ago, when we had just one per shift, but we have a plan to increase them to three on each shift.”

Mr Al Junaibi said there were also plans to increase the numbers of nurses per shift from six to 10, and to double the number of beds to 24.

Dr Abdul Al Helmi, director of the A&E department, said that patients do not appreciate that cases were classed in terms of need, which were colour coded.

Code red cases are treated immediately because they are severe and need the doctor to save the patient’s life; orange cases, such as those with fractures, may face a 10-minute wait; yellow refers to patients who can afford to wait an hour to see the doctor; the green one for two hours; and the blue one for four hours.

“But we work on decreasing that time as soon as we can, ­depending on the situations and cases at the department,” Dr Al Helmi said.