Anyone that has had an encounter with a nurse has a different opinion about nursing profession and always have one thing at the back of their minds: Nurses have never been nice.
They keep wondering why they can’t be like Florence Nightingale, the pioneer of nursing profession, a celebrated British social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing.
Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a nurse during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was known as “The Lady with the Lamp” after her habit of making rounds at night.
Nightingale’s lasting contribution has been her role in founding the modern nursing profession. She set an example of compassion, commitment to patient care and diligent and thoughtful hospital administration.
Nurses say nursing is a noble profession but with the names they are called, one still wonder how true that is.
According to the Merriam Webster definition, being noble means to have or show personal qualities that people admire such as honesty, generosity, courage. It also means to be righteous, virtuous, good, honourable, honest, upright, upstanding, decent, worthy, noble-minded, uncorrupted, moral, ethical, reputable, magnanimous, unselfish, generous, self-sacrificing, brave.
A good nurse is expected to be caring, empathetic, compassionate, responsible and detail oriented.
Speaking with our reporter on her encounter with a nurse, Mrs Glory Abe said, ?nursing is a good profession but some nurses just shouldn’t be nurses.?
Recounting what she went through when she wanted to have her second daughter, she said, ?When I went into labour with our second daughter last October, the nurse shoved my back to sit me and then pushed me over, my husband almost back-handed her. I was gushing blood and she told me to clean it up. I was shocked, but of course, I didn’t have strength to shout at her or report her. All I wanted then was having my baby successfully. Then she told my doctor not to attend to me, that I wasn?t in labour but I was faking it.
?My mum was disturbed and she had to personally kneel to beg her to attend to me before she arrogantly came to look at me.?
Also, Mr ?Idowu Okeowo, who was recently discharged from a private hospital in Lagos said, “there was this particular nurse that is always unhappy. She’s never happy, she’s always grumbling. Everyone in the room I was knew I had diabetes. She frowns anytime you call her, in fact, I had to report her to her colleagues to talk to her.
“She can make a healthy person unwell. She’s never calm, I’m sure she can’t mentor anyone on the profession.”
Mr Odion Eromosele has a differnet perspective to this. He said, “nurses are nice to guys, but they are not to pregnant women because when my wife was pregnant, she complained about the attitudes of some nurses attending to her but afterwards, they were nice to her when she was in the labour room, though I was with her.”
Mrs Asabi Abeeb said her encounter when her daughter was ill was nothing to write home about. “My seven year old baby had typhoid, she was then admitted and we had to sleep over but for the two days we stayed at the hospital, we never enjoyed the nurse on night duty, she was always cussing and fuming around.
“And if you complain, she would say, she has many patients to attend to. At a point, I had to tell her to drop the job if she isn’t capable. She was acting as though, they were forcing her to do it.”
However, a student at the Millenium College of Health Technology, Akure, Ondo state, Ms Yemisi Adejoro said, she chose to be a nurse because, ?I love taking care of patients, I love to take care of the weak and sick. I am passionate about what I?m into.?
Adejoro said, ?If you remember vividly in the bible, Jesus was very compassionate about the sick before they could be healed. He had compassion on them, at a point, he wept. And so, we have to be compassionate about what we are doing.”
Describing the roles of nurses, she said, “Nurses are to issue out drug prescribed by doctors, they cant treat without doctor permission, they only treat when they are been posted to basic hospitals. Normally they are not to be in labour ward but they do when there is no midwife in the hospital.”
According to her, one of the reasons nurses are harsh is due to insufficient staff, “when one person is doing what three people are to do, the nurse will be stressed up and that will make her harsh.”
She upholds that, “nursing is still a noble profession if nurses follows their professional ethics.”
A practising nurse in Lagos who spoke under anonymity said, “nurses are not harsh. However, it depends on an individual. Patients shouldn’t see us as been harsh, we are really still noble.”
