KUALA LUMPUR: When former club deejay J Manvir underwent a kidney transplant at the Kuala Lumpur Hospital (KLH) two years ago, he was so surprised by the excellent treatment he received that he decided he wanted to do something to give back to the healthcare system.
“I was a dialysis patient for 10 years. And then two years ago, I had a transplant; my wife gave me a kidney. I told the doctors at KLH that I was wrong in my perception that private hospitals were better than public ones and insisted that I wanted to give something back and kept bugging them to tell me if I could be of any help to them.”
The 47-year-old’s determination led him to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and two years later, he now heads the WHO-sanctioned non-governmental organisation Patients for Patient Safety Malaysia (PFPSM).
“What we do is get hospitals and patients to engage to see if the best care is being given and what these hospitals, public and private, can do to improve helping patients,” Manvir said.
Last year, the director of the Nephrology Department in KLH, where Manvir had sought treatment, told him about a WHO workshop on patient safety that would be held here for the first time and urged him to attend it.
“So I took the form, answered a long set of questions and later found out that I was one of those selected to go for the workshop. We shared our experiences and they wanted to set up a patient safety organisation in Malaysia following that,” said Manvir, who now manages his own sports management company.
To date, similar WHO-sanctioned organisations have been set up in 53 countries. “In order for a country to set up such an organisation, they would have to hold a workshop and train people, including hospital staff and even patients, about patient safety.
“Our umbrella body is the Malaysian Society for Quality in Health (MSQH), the accreditation body for healthcare services and facilites. And they decided that hospitals needed to look at patient safety seriously.
After going through the workshop and training with WHO, PFPSM was finally set up and Manvir was elected chairman. The NGO was officially launched by Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr S Subramaniam in April this year. Manvir said that the 12 committee members in the NGO comprised patients like him as well as people in health care, including doctors and nurses.
“The Health Ministry’s director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, who has been extremely supportive, realises that this is the new age of how things are done in hospitals and he was like ‘let’s get this done’,” he added.
“After all, this is part and parcel of a developed country... that the healthcare system must be of a certain standard.”
Manvir said although the Malaysian healthcare system was excellent, patients hardly have a voice.
“The patients have to engage with healthcare professionals to ensure that what they want is being done. Right now, hospitals are run by doctors but do they actually know what the patient is going through? In theory yes, but in practice no.
“This is where the PFPSM comes in. In September, we had our second workshop and this time we engaged hospitals and their patients.
“A total of 14 hospitals joined us and their directors were each asked to bring one of their patients and they were all trained on patient issues,” he added. These patients, Manvir said, are trained to sit on the hospital’s patient safety council, which is compulsory in each hospital under the Health Ministry’s directive.
“The patient sits on the council with the rest of hospital staff to assess the problems they may face and address complaints about the hospital.”
He said the patient safety advocates also needed to understand medical terms.
“So training is conducted by MSQH and we gradually place them on the board and guide them along the way,” he added.
PFPSM, Manvir said, has also received international acclaim, as Malaysia is one of 12 countries selected to be on WHO’s patient safety global advisory board. — The Malaysian Insider
This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on December 1, 2014.