Illustrative quotes demonstrating patients' perceptions of health workers in different departments in four study sites
| HC1 | HC2 | HC3 | HC4 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ART clinic | The nurses should be kind. They should know that they are dealing with people who are sick. If they feel that there is the work load they should be frustrated with the government not to us. [Female, HIV] Sometimes [the health workers] forget they are at the institution where they are dealing with sick people. Sometimes they don't care if you are very sick or not. They are just very slow in working. [Male, HIV] | The clinic should have time to people who are on ARVs and they should pay more time and ask them what problems they face. [Female, HIV] Yes, the number of health workers should increase because you find that we stay at the clinic without being attended to all because there are few health workers. [Male, HIV] | This clinic is fine but the ART department the health workers are very slow. [Male, HIV] The health workers at this clinic are very lazy and very relaxed. They take up too much of their time before attending to us especially the clinical officers. [Male, HIV] | In my experience, nurses should be nicer with the patients, not shouting at us. And they should teach these clerks how to handle files so they don't get lost. [Female, HIV] At this clinic, ART files keep going missing and they will open another one for you but you find that you lose out on the way you used to take your drugs or your health record. [Male, HIV] |
| Maternal and child health department | My experiences are that most of the time the CO and nurses spend most of their time discussing unnecessary stories. They even go for lunch early. [Female, MCH] This clinic works well but we need more medication. Prescriptions don't help especially when you don't have money. [Female, MCH] | This clinic they don't take patients to be important. So you find that they shout at us sometimes even when we are right. [Female, MCH] It is very discouraging coming to this clinic because sometimes they are very slow to attend to patients. And they are not even bothered if we are happy about it or not. [Female, MCH] | Nurses work very well but sometimes they are slow. [Female, MCH] They should improve on how they give the drugs because most of the time they just give prescriptions. For us to go and buy medicine instead they get the medicine who knows where they take it! [Female, MCH] | When you come for family planning they tell you to buy the drugs for injection. That is very bad and instead of telling us in a polite way they shout at you. [Female, MCH] Nurses at MCH […] sometimes shout at patients. We take it as a normal thing because they are used to shouting at us. Maybe it is their way of not wanting us to ask many questions. [Female, MCH] |
| Outpatient Department | Health workers should be serious, not like nurses [now] they are just chatting here. [Female, OPD] Please they should stop having a lot of stories instead of working especially today when there is these new nurses. [Male, OPD] | Time, they always start very late as I have told you, we reach here mostly at 6 hrs and they start attending to you around 9 hrs. [Female, OPD] People work very slow here at the clinic. You can find someone maybe a nurse just moving about, forgetting that patients are waiting. [Male, OPD] | The members of staff should stop getting money from patients to collect their drugs. If you don't have money here then you go home very late [Female, OPD] There are a lot of health workers they should stop chatting when it is the time for them to work. They should concentrate on the patients first instead of gossiping. [Female, OPD] | The problem is with the nurses who are very harsh with patients. Sometimes they shout at some patients [Male, OPD] The health workers most of them come late (doctor) and take time before attending to patients, this angers some of the patients and they start shouting at the health workers. [Female, OPD] |
ART, antiretroviral therapy clinic; MCH, maternal and child health department; OPD, outpatient department.