Four decades of selfless service in nursing

Apr 03, 2011 News

Jean Persaud is a ‘Special Person’

“It’s not just about the money. Yes, money is important, but I feel so good when I treat somebody and they come back and say, ‘Nurse, that tablet really helped. Look how good I feel.’ That gives me satisfaction.”
By Dale Andrews
If ever you venture into the tiny East Coast Demerara village of Enterprise and mention the name Nurse Jean, any young child on the street could direct you to where she lives. Such is the reverence with which our ‘special person’ this week is held in her community.
And maybe that reverence is not limited only to Enterprise, since Jean Persaud served the East Demerara Estates as a nurse all her working life. She is respected by almost every sugar worker who graced those plantations since the early 1970s.
The wife of Lloyd Persaud for 45 years and mother of two, Nurse Jean’s work has transcended the sugar industry, making her a household name in the health sector on the East Coast for more than four decades.
And while the nurses of today are leaving these shores in droves for a better life overseas, Nurse Jean actually gave up a job in a Jamaica, Queens, New York Hospital to return home in the depressing years of the 1980s.

Nurse Jean Persaud

Even though she has literally “hung up her gloves” her skill is still very much in demand, so much so that she continues to be honoured by the many organizations that were impressed by her dedication to providing nursing care of the highest standard.
But while she is so cherished in Enterprise, Nurse Jean was actually born in Vryheid’s Lust, a few miles lower down the coast. She was the first of Ineze and David Somrah’s nine children.
She cannot remember much of her life in Vryheid’s Lust since her family moved to Better Hope in her early years.
Jean’s early education was obtained at Better Hope Canadian Mission School and then Better Hope Secondary, where she successfully wrote her School-Leaving and College of Perceptors examinations.
“I came from a very humble family and seeing that I had many younger siblings, I had to get up and assist. So I really did not go further with my education immediately after graduating.”
Obviously a career in nursing was not far away, since her love for the profession was actually cultivated from as early as age eight.
It was a strange encounter with nurses that actually stirred the love for the profession.
“I was sick in hospital. I had Tonsilitis and had surgery. Looking at the nurses going to and fro and the way how they looked after the patients… and the lovely uniforms… from then on I fell in love with nursing and I always told myself that I would love to be one.”
She didn’t wait too long to start preparing herself for the profession. In school she began doing First Aid as a precursor.
“You know like when they have any incident in school… when children fall down, I would play the role of a nurse and perform First Aid. Some children don’t like to see blood, but that wasn’t a problem for me and onto now, it’s not a problem,” she said.
After leaving school she was eventually accepted at the Georgetown Hospital in 1964, but that was during the period when Guyana experienced a terrible social disturbance rendering travel to the city problematic for the young aspiring nurse from the East Coast of Demerara.
So in order to continue her chosen career, she relocated to the Lusignan Hospital where she enrolled as a trainee nurse.
For her own safety during that trying period, the young trainee chose to stay at the facility’s hostel which enabled her to remain always close to the job.
A few months later when the disturbance had abated, she was once again sent to the Georgetown Hospital where she was seconded, and where she eventually enrolled to be trained as a professional staff nurse.
She was in batch number 28.

Nurse Jean displays the plaque she received as an honouree of the Enterprise Support Group, represented by Rasheed Baksh (left) and Videsh Lall.

At the end of her training, Nurse Jean’s first posting was to the Guyana Sugar Corporation where in 1969, she was sent to the Enterprise Health Centre to start a rewarding career of providing health care to mainly sugar workers and their immediate families.
But the lure of a better life pulled her to the United States of America where her skills were in great demand.
She explained that to work as a nurse in the US she had to sit the High School equivalent as well as the State Board Examination, which she successfully did.
During her stay in the US, she also successfully completed the Medical Assistant Programme.
However, after that stint overseas and despite the better pay, her love for her homeland overwhelmed her and she gleefully returned to serve her countrymen.
“I couldn’t make it there, because I love my country and I wanted to help my people. So I spent some time and I came back,” Nurse Jean explained.
“It’s not just about the money. Yes, money is important, but I feel so good when I treat somebody and they come back and say, ‘Nurse, that tablet really helped. Look how good I feel.’ That gives me satisfaction,” she added.
Upon her return to Guyana, she resumed her pursuits at the Enmore Health Centre, where she remained for quite a long time before being transferred back to Enterprise.
At Enterprise, she spent the rest of her nursing career until she was 62 years old, developing an enviable relationship with those she encountered.
Every nurse will attest that their work is challenging, but for our ‘special person’ being a nurse in the sugar industry was even more so.
“There are a lot of things I can tell about my work in the sugar industry but it is so much.”
However she did recall two unsettling incidents.
One had to do with a woman who had delivered a baby at the Georgetown Hospital and went home.
According to Nurse Jean, the woman was apparently anemic and by the time her relatives tried to rush her to the health centre, she died.
Then there was a case of a child who also perished before she could have looked at him.
“I feel sad, I feel sorry you know why, because I have a mother’s feelings. It would take a while before I could get over it, because in many cases the first (medical) person they could get in contact with is me,” Nurse Jean reflected.
Despite those depressing experiences, our ‘special person’ has had some satisfying moments in her nursing career, although one of them occurred in a not so satisfying circumstance.
She recalled the tragedy in the early 1990s which claimed the lives of five sugar works at Enterprise.
According to Nurse Jean, she was alone at the Health Centre when news reached her of a truck turning over with close to 50 sugar workers.
All of the injured were rushed to the health centre, and Nurse Jean had the demanding task of initially looking at them before preparing the more seriously injured for further treatment at the Georgetown Hospital.
It’s anyone’s guess how she was able to effect such a herculean task but before the night was out Nurse Jean had treated almost 40 persons, 25 of whom were transferred to Georgetown.
“l left work at 11:30 pm that night and I had to thank my neighbours and in-laws for taking care of my children, who were young at the time, until I got home,” she recalled.
She described nursing in her early days as far more professional than now, although she pointed out that there still are some quality nurses around today.
“Nowadays students tell their tutors anything. They curse, they quarrel, walk off the job and you know, they don’t have this zeal.”
She reasoned that while many nurses nowadays would complain of working in the hard times, it was even more difficult for the nurses of old.
“No, no, no, we had the hard times, the older nurses had the hard times!” she exclaimed adamantly.
“We had to do so many things. But now if the nurses don’t want to do this, well, they just walk off. In our time sometimes you don’t even remember you didn’t eat lunch because it was so busy.”
She recalled working in such a manner in Ward B at the Georgetown Hospital where most of the diabetic patients and people with ulcers were housed.
But at GuySuCo, where she worked for most of her nursing life, it was much different in that she did not have to do much patient care.
She even acted intermittently as a Medex in the sugar industry.
According to Nurse Jean, work on the estate dealt mainly with treating persons for industrial accidents and presiding over diabetic and hypertensive clinics, which could be very challenging.
Sometimes she worked alone or with the help of a nurse aid.
And even though she had a family to prepare for, Nurse Jean prided herself with being at work every morning before seven o’clock.
“I know I had to do certain things. I had to prepare my children, and my husband for work, so I got up very early. Sometimes my husband used to work shifts and sometimes for weeks we didn’t see one another. It was very challenging but I enjoyed it. And now that I’m retired, I miss the busyness,” she said with a chuckle.
Although her two children spent much of their time with her at her place of work, neither of them have found it worth their while to follow in the footsteps of their mother.

Our 'Special Person' during her stint at the Jamaica Queens, New York Hospital before her return to Guyana in the 1980s.

However, Nurse Jean was proud to relate that one of her grandsons is in medical school, while a granddaughter is likely to follow suit. She also has a niece who is a nurse in the United States.
Even in these trying times, Nurse Jean said that she would become a nurse is she had a chance to do it again.
However there are some things that she would like to change.
“Like punctuality and dealing with nurses who don’t have the zeal.”
She admitted that sometimes the work and patients would get one upset but she added that there is no substitute for professionalism.
“You know sometimes it happens to me. I had that experience several times.”
She recalled one time when she was threatened by a man after she informed him that the health centre she was working at was primarily for sugar workers.
“Sometimes non-sugar workers would come and I would help them out, but it was only on one occasion I could do so, normally. And sometimes when you tell them this they would become annoyed. One time a man said that he would chop me up.”
For her unstinting contribution to nursing in Guyana, our ‘special person’ was in 2008 honoured in New York by the Better Hope Support Group.
Last year she was also recognised by the New York-based Enterprise Support Group.
Nurse Jean was also the Second Runner-up for the first ever GuySuCo Champion Worker award in the late 1970s.
But for her none of these accolades could compare with the satisfaction she would get if she ever had a chance to be an active nurse again.
Apart from her nursing career, Nurse Jean is also a very religious person, being an active member of the Messiah Lutheran Church in Enterprise, where she doubles as a lay preacher and presides over bible classes and the prayer meetings on Fridays.

1 thoughts on “Four decades of selfless service in nursing”

Marlon Alistair Budhram November 27, 2011 at 12:18 am

WHAT ELSE CAN YOU EXPECT FROM THE BUDHRAM CLAN, WE ARE ALL SPECIAL PERSONS, MAY GOD BLESS US ALL.CONGRATS AUNTY JEAN.LOVE YOU