A Facebook picture posted by a a Frere Hospital patient on Friday showing how she used her lunchbox as a potty went viral at the weekend and caused an outcry.
“I did not ask to be involved in an accident,” Sinethemba Joya, 29, said from her hospital bed on Sunday. “I would’ve wanted to walk myself to the toilet but I can’t because I’m injured.”
The provincial health department reacted within hours.
Provincial health spokesperson Lwandile Sicwetsha said he visited the patients on Saturday evening after seeing the Facebook posts.
“We have stepped in and listened to the complaints of the patients. These complaints are totally unacceptable and it is not the way patients should be treated at the hospital.
“The MEC has asked hospital management to look into the conduct of the nurses in that particular ward and immediately put corrective measures in place that upholds the dignity and rights of the patients.”
On Friday, Joya wrote that her cries for a bedpan went unnoticed by nurses.
She told the Dispatch desperation and frustration led her to post the picture, in an effort to get authorities to respond.
Joya, who lives in Cape Town, was involved in a taxi crash in September that left eight dead.
She was travelling to Cape Town from King William’s Town after burying her father.
Her legs were broken, leaving her bedridden for more than a month.
She said her troubles started after she was transferred to the orthopaedic ward from high care.
Joya said that by Friday she had grown tired of “begging nurses” for better care and turned to Facebook to share her pain.
“I was so angry at how I had to urinate. Having to resort to using a lunchbox I’d been using for food was so humiliating and degrading,” she said.
Joya said patients in the ward were only given bedpans by the nurses after mealtimes, which were from 8 to 9am, midday to 1pm and 4.30 to 5.30pm.
The only other time they were allowed to urinate was at their bathtime at 4am.
On Friday, Joya said she did not need to use the bedpan that early. But when she asked for a bedpan at about 7am, the nurses ignored her pleas.
“Nurses kept coming in and I would shout for a bedpan, telling them that I wouldn’t be able to hold it in until after 9am, but they just ignored me.
“Eventually I had no option but to use the container I store my food in. I didn’t want to pee on myself because I still have cuts and bruises on my back so lying in my own urine for hours would’ve made them itchy and infected.”
Nurses had seen the urine-filled container and still ignored her, she said.
When the bedpan arrived after breakfast, Joya emptied the urine into it and waited for it to be collected. She said other patients in need were also told it wasn’t yet “pee time”.
“Most of the patients here are old, frail women from the rural areas who just keep quiet, so I had to speak up.”..