Sabah formulating strategies to prevent burnout among healthcare staff

 


By Olivia Miwil - October 28, 2020 @ 10:38pm

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah government has formulated strategies to prevent healthcare staff from getting stressed out from the workload, particularly during Covid-19 pandemic.

State Covid-19 spokesperson Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun said the department was grateful with the assistance and support of skilled workers from the Health Ministry as well as the non-governmental organisations.

He said such gestures have helped to reduce the burden of those battling against the outbreak

"Those from outside Sabah normally take a few days to adjust to the situation in the state, but they are adjusting fast and able to function within a short period.

"The Health Department has also ensured that the manpower is being arranged based on rotation and systematically to prevent fatigue and burnout among the medical and health personnel," he said during a virtual press conference.

He was responding to a portal quoting a source that some healthcare workers cried and took sleeping pills, among others, to cope with the heavy workload with daily hundreds of new Covid-19 cases in the state.

The article also claimed that the deployment of healthcare workers from other states had to undergo quarantine and need to be retrained due to lack of experience.

Masidi added that it was inevitable that all frontliners are in tremendous pressure to work compounded with the condition of facilities in Sabah that were not as good as in the peninsula.

"For now, there are 453 health professionals of all levels that have been mobilised to Sabah. We are also roping in volunteers from the private hospitals.

"We have requested additional resources, but we are hoping the number of cases will be lower in three or four weeks time so that the requirement will be less than what we want."




Comments