Table 3.
Categories, codes, and select quotations of theme 1: physical needs
| Categories | Codes | Quotations |
|---|---|---|
| Fod and drinks | Provide food and drinks | Provide meals for us as the food option at staff canteen is limited and we have no time to venture out to food stalls outside. (AHP) |
| Provide treats/snacks fortnightly to staff from different team. An army fight on it stomach. (Nurse) | ||
| Rest and respite | More rest breaks | The freezing of leave has made working hours intensive, and I think a short break is definitely necessary. To make up for manpower issues, the annual leave can be made available once in 2 months for each employee. (AHP) |
| More rest days | ||
| Better leave management | ||
| Nurses need more off days, especially after night duty. Two night duties followed by one off day is really not enough, will cause burnout faster. (Nurse) | ||
| Basic wages and allowances | Basic wages and allowances | Human resource should not refuse to pay us night duty and weekend allowances. (Doctor) |
| Manpower and workload distribution | Manpower shortage | Having more ground staff can help with the workload and management to distribute the workload fairly. (Nurse) |
| Manpower assignments | ||
| Heavy workload | ||
| …not fair for consultants to have a few days off in a week and getting to go home early once work ends, but junior doctors have to cover 2 OTs or get deployed to another location even when we end early. (Doctor) | ||
| Non-essential workload | ||
| Fairness in workload distribution | ||
|
Please minimize audits during this period. It is very stressful to care for patients and worry about whether audits are completed. (Nurse) …if we are in the same ward with the same group of colleagues, we will have support and are comfortable working together. Deploying us to different disciplines adds on stress, uncertainty and more worry for us. (Nurse) | ||
| It is good to have deployed nurses in the Emergency Department (ED), but most are not ED-trained. Not only do ED staffs have to perform their duties, they have to also ensure deployed staff does things correctly, which can be taxing and stressful. (Nurse) | ||
| Working arrangements and hours | Rostering of shift work | Please fix the roster. Doing 12-hours shifts since the start of this pandemic is not helping health care workers to take care of themselves. (AHP) |
| Keep to working hours | ||
| Flexible work arrangement | ||
| Not to work continuous more than 4-5 days straight. (Nurse) | ||
| Allocate more support for workers with young children, elderly, family with medical or psychological needs under their care. For example, flexible work hours. (AHP) |