Not nearly enough recognition or respect is afforded the nursing profession in Guyana. The pay, historically, has been poor, the training is demanding and attended by an absurdly ‘peppercorn’ stipend; we know too that newly graduated nurses employed at state-run hospitals are usually regarded as being at the lower end of the food chain, and therefore ‘fair game’ for being assigned the more exacting chores.
A few years ago this newspaper was approach-ed clandestinely by a group of trainee nurses with complaints of coarse treatment at the hands of their superiors and what they considered to be a certain indifference to their complaints by senior administrative functionaries at the Ministry of Public Health. We were sufficiently satisfied not only that their controlled protestations were not being countenanced but that the responses from ‘higher up’ were dismissive, even threatening. It was as if their complaint constituted the breaking of rules. Some of them expressed concern that for their protestations they might be evicted from the training programme.
None of that happened and today they now work in the system as Registered Nurses. Conver-sations with a few of them reveal how quickly they have put the past behind them and are now focused on the various responsibilities associated with patient care. “That is what the responsibilities that go with nursing do to you,” one of our trainees of a few years ago told us recently. “Once you have the responsibility associated with being a trained nurse that sense of responsibility makes you put the pressures behind you.
The outbreak of COVID-19 and the attendant patient treatment and care requirements have presented nurses to the uninitiated in a new light. It will be recalled that initially, there had occurr-ed some awkward image management glitches in the public education process associated with raising awareness of COVID-19. Recall the initial ‘siege mentality’ that had derived from the aura of fear that had attended our earliest ‘encounter’ with the virus as manifested, for example, in a frenzied ‘run’ on outlets to acquire detergents and sanitizers.
Listening to a nurse attached to a state hospital relate her first day (it was actually the night shift, she told us) was chilling. You could see her re-living the experience. “I was terrified,” she mustered eventually.
Professionalism and a sense of duty are transforming characteristics. She told us that once she found herself “in the middle of it” a “sense of duty” kicks in. “You understand how to protect yourself and do what you have to do at the same time.” These days, she says, “you simply put your head down and do what you have to do.
It is a decidedly humbling feeling to engage a professional nurse who is living and working the COVID-19 experience. Theirs is a daily excursion into risk that has to be suppressed if the execution of their patient care responsibilities is to remain at a level that brings a measure of comfort to the afflicted. And when one considers that our nurses live that experience, ‘day in, day out’ while the rest of us go through our deliberately choreographed social distancing ‘paces’ and carefully adjust our face masks as though our lives depended on it, you cannot help but get to thinking that nurses, these often lightly regarded men and women deliver service with an aura of courage that makes them very special people.
It would be the greatest of unforgiveable travesties if, in the fullness of time, we do not pay suitable tribute to their courage and their dedication.
The World Health Organization (WHO) got it right. In May last year it officially announced that 2020 would be dedicated to nurses and midwives. It could hardly have known that much of 2020 would find nurses battling with a health crisis that would move the profession into the global spotlight.
Nurses have proved to be the health warriors who have taken on the responsibility very willingly with their heart and soul. The profession is central to tackling the pandemic and, nurses in every country, have “stepped up and stepped beyond” their calling. They are working in the forefront and are managing patient screenings, placement as well the care of patients in the COVID zone. Nurses are working round the clock, pushing themselves to the limit and putting their lives on the line, very often with limited resources.
