4 Cebu City surgeons plan to quit due to heavy workload

CEBU CITY — All four resident surgeons of the government-run Cebu City Medical Center have threatened to resign due to their excessive workload, a prospect that could severely jeopardize hospital operations.

Hospital chief Dr. Felicitas Manaloto said the four surgeons handle no less than a hundred patients daily.

Mayor Tomas Osmeña quickly lashed out at the surgeons, criticizing them for having "attitude problems."

He also lashed out at the hospital itself, saying he is very disappointed at the "poor service" it is rendering despite the huge budget City Hall allocates for it.

Osmeña said the P100 million the city allocates for CCMC each year is being wasted because of the poor service it renders.

He could not resist comparing the city hospital with the national government-run Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center which, he said, provides better service despite its much lower budget of P60 million.

Osmeña did praise Manaloto for introducing improvements in the emergency room and in cleanliness, but said he was still unimpressed by the hospital’s overall performance.

"There were changes, but the attitudes remain the same," he said.

Osmeña cited the case of Jefferson Navaja, his wife Margot’s driver, who was taken to the city hospital after his motorcycle got hit by a car on Christmas Eve.

Being a victim of a vehicular accident, Navaja was supposed to be given a thorough examination, but Osmeña said the X-ray results were instead inaccurate.

When Navaja was to be transferred to the private Chong Hua Hospital where there were better facilities, the move was delayed by sloppy paperwork. In the end, Navaja failed to make it to Chong Hua alive. Osmeña has since ordered an investigation.

As to the resigning CCMC surgeons, Manaloto refused to give their names, saying she has heard of their impending resignations but no actual resignation letters have yet reached her desk.

"I understand the situation that they have right now but I am very much positive that they will not do it because our duty is to serve," she said.

Manaloto said the four surgeons no longer have time to rest as they often go on 24-hour duty shifts and still have to come back the following day because of the sheer number of scheduled surgeries.

"Among our surgeons, two go on duty for 24 hours, while the other two relieve them the following day. But what usually happens is that any of them have to go on duty even on their rest days because of the workload," she said.

According to Manaloto, the ideal number of surgeons needed at the CCMC is 12. In effect, each of the four surgeons is doing the work of three.

She insisted that the four surgeons’ threat to resign stems from their heavy workload and has nothing to do with their salaries, saying they recently got pay hikes from City Hall.

The hospital official, however, did not say how much the surgeons are earning or how much pay increase they got.

Manaloto said the hospital has been trying to hire more doctors, but there seems to be no takers. — Freeman News Service