Yes, I am a nurse, a good one at that or so I have been made to believe. May be it is because I started my training when I was just 17, which was ten years ago. I believe this profession can still be saved. I believe that there is good in every human being. I know that there are good nurse and bad nurses.
I have worked in both rural hospitals and ones in urban areas. I have worked in public and private hospitals. I have worked with people across all races, with patients across all races and I can say that they are not different from each other.They all want to ba cared for. When I arrived in Joburg few years ago after finishing my four year training in KwaZulu Natal I was told in no certain terms that I was too soft for the profession. That did not make any sense to me at the time. I had passed my training with flying colours and I was really ready to work in that hospital and learn new things, but what happened afterwards was not what I had pictured when I left my homestead.
Before I could start my duties I was given a very tough nursing sister to give me some disorientation, err I meant orientation. She told me from the beginning that she was not tolerant to nurses who thought patients were their friends. She told me that this was work not a social networking club. She was supposed show mw the ropes , but the only rope she showed me was the one that I wished that I had hanged myself with. The ward was a disaster with the capital DEATH. The cubicle was supposed to accomodate six beds, but there were eleven patients in it. Five them were lying on the floor covered in one blanket each. I was horrified, I had never seen anything like that in my entire life. One had vomited, one had diarrhoea and there faeces were all over his body.There was this patient on the first bed from my right , he looked half dead to me. He gave us one glance and tried to open his mouth. It looked like he wanted to say something to us, but he never did. I tried to go nearer him but the sister pulled me by my arm and told me that if I helped one, they will all take advantage of me and she will never finish with showing me the ward. She took me to one of the patient's bathrooms so that I would be able to show new patients where it was. She knocked on the first door and some one answered back. The second door was half opened. She pushed it it did not go further, she pushed again and something pushed back. She told me to look inside.
A man with brown trousers beneath his knees was sitting on the toilet seat, his red hat was on the floor. His head was hanging between his legs. He was dead. No one knew for how long had he been dead. No one knew what killed him. No one cared . She told me to call the nursing assistants to pull him out because she was still busy with me. I told her that I didin't mind helping out with the laying out of that patient. The answer was no. She opened another bathroom door. I was supposed to be the bathroom for female patients, but when we entered a man was lying inside the bath tub. He was burnt to death. He had scalds all over the body except the face. The night nurses had told the day staff that he was having a bath when they were giving the report. No one border to check if he was still okay. I thought I would loose my mind that day but I didn't. It was my first day in that hospital. There I was standing in front of a dead man who could have been saved. Both these men were sons ,husbands, fathers , friends and colleagus to someone. They did not die with dignity and they were under the care of people who were supposed to treat them with respect and in a dignified manner. No relative ever came for the man who died in the toilet, to inquire about his demise. Unfortunately for the nurses, the burnt man had very educated relatives. There threatened to sue the hospital, they call the journalist, but no one was really allowed in the ward. We were told not to talk to anyone about that case. The code name for that patient was COMBUSTION when nurses were taliking amoung themselves. It was the most disgusting thing to listen to. I left that hospital after three months. I couldn't take it anymore. I was depressed, I couldn't eat or sleep. Six years down the line those nurses who were working thath night are still attending that case. The family did sue the hospital for negligence. To me it was murder, whichever way I looked at it.
I am still a nurse. I still try to do good by my patients under the circumstances. I never went for counselling because I did not believe in it at the time. time healed my wounds, but I still wonder about those two families. Something died inside of me that day. My soul. I look at the nurses and I am scared, not of them but for them. We need help, we need prayer. We need everything and anything that can save this noble profession. Bad nurses can turn good ones into devils. It is shocking how nurses are nasty to others. Nurses are frustrated, no one cares. The employer wants the job done. Nurse counsillors for those hospitals that can afford them can only do so much. Nurses are dead, and the living ones are also dying. The poison is slow but the effect is just too strong. Despite this I wouldn't change my professiom for anything in this world.
22 Comments
Only TVSA members can reply to this thread. Click here to login or register.