Prof. Onyebuchi Azubuike, the Chief Medical Director (CMD) of Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Umuahia, has emphasised the importance of empathy in healthcare delivery services.
According to him, without empathy, hospitals cannot achieve patient’s satisfaction, of which comes with better health outcomes.
The CMD made the assertion in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Umuahia on Tuesday, emphasising that no hospital could satisfy patients without empathy.
Azubuike said that the absence of empathy in hospitals’ personnel moved him to institute measures to restore it in FMC Umuahia.
He said that empathy was very necessary for quality health services, adding that medical and paramedical personnel needed it to drive a result-oriented service to patients.
Urging that empathy be pursued by all hospitals’ managements, he said: “I keep talking to the heads of nurses.
“This is because they are the largest group of professionals in the hospital followed by the doctors.
“Once they know that patients deserve empathy, you are close to fully restoring that important quality of empathy in hospital personnel.
“However, you might not be able to change some human beings because some people are just naturally bad and there is nothing you can do about that,” he said.
According to him, his target at FMC Umuahia is to give the patients maximum satisfaction from the hospital’s services.
“So, if patients are seeing that the majority of our nurses know that patients are to be shown empathy, I am sure they will come out more satisfied,” he said.
The CMD said his pursuit of patient’s maximum satisfaction led to his building a new Accident and Emergency Ward with better equipment and expanded capacity.
“We have also built two Interns Quarters for House Officers and we intended to do more if the budget had not been delayed, to accommodate more interns.
“At the moment, we are able to accommodate between 60 to 80 House Officers inside the two separate two-storey buildings used as interns quarters, completed and functionalised,” he said.
He said he had also built an Invitro Fertilisation (IVF) Centre where fertility experts carried out IVF.
“So far, the place has done well and is giving succour to so many infertile couples that otherwise would not have been able to parent a child and at a reasonable cost too.
“The cost is almost one third of what you get at private settings.
“If private settings are taking five to six million for a cycle, we will take about N1.5million,” he said.
“So, you can see the succour that the department brings to lots of families who could not have otherwise afforded the private services,” Azubuike said.
The CMD said he had built a Guest House with 20 rooms for IVF clients coming from outside the state, which brings in some funds for the hospital.
Azubuike also stated that he had also built an “Out-Born New-Born” building where pre-term children born outside the hospital were looked after with more ventilators and increased capacity.
He said he was building a very big 20-suite ultra modern modular theatre, to ensure that all kinds of surgeries were done without delay because of lack of theatre spaces.
According to him, his management is also building a two-storey Burns and Plastic Department, which is at the roofing stage.
Azubuike who became the CMD of the FMC, Umuahia in April 2019, said that as his second tenure ends early 2027, he would like to be remembered as a CMD and CEO who changed things and put smiles on faces at Umuahia FMC. (NAN)
