Selfless and wholly devoted to nursing

Mar 11, 2012 News

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…Lorna Williams is a ‘Special Person’

Pull Quote: “I branched off into that field (nursing), but honestly I had really wanted to be a teacher. I always had that instinct to take care of people and nursing just suited me. I could feel for others and feel for myself at the same time.”

By Leon Suseran

Lorna Patricia Williams believes the art of nursing has been lost in our society. She is convinced of this

because she knew all that came with the job, having served the profession for more than three decades – 32 years to be precise.
This week’s ‘Special Person’ has served in every hospital in East Berbice and even numerous health centres. In fact, so dedicated to her job as a nurse was Lorna that she was never absent from duty or late. She understood the importance of her work, thus she is disappointed with what she believes has become the norm today.
Being a health-care provider is not an easy job, but as you will soon learn, Lorna Williams did it better than most.

 

EARLY LIFE & GROWING UP
Born on March 7, 1954 to Iona and Samuel Williams at Rose Hall Town, Corentyne, Lorna had one brother, Rupert and five sisters, Gloria, Stella, Rita, Claudette and Jacqueline. The family moved from Corentyne to Canefield, Canje in 1959, after which Williams attended St Patrick’s Anglican School in 1963.
She later wrote the College of Preceptors exams but did not attend secondary school “because my parents were old- fashioned– they thought that girls should not have education– that’s the type of family I came from and that was why I was the only girl that was allowed to work”.
Growing up for her was “good…we hadn’t much; we were not a rich family but we were comfortable– my father used to work at the Rose Hall Estate and my mom never worked”.
She became pregnant with her first son, Shawn, shortly after school in 1972 and then she started to work little jobs such as a home-maker, and a kindergarten school- teacher, including a brick- factory in Cumberland where she earned $2 per week.
She later got married on December 27, 1975 to Hubert Daniels, a sailor on the MV Torani. That was an arranged marriage, she recalled, because “again being old- fashioned, my parents thought that when you have one child, you’re doomed– that’s embarrassing– but out

of that I got three children: Mark, Marlon and Milroy”. They then moved to Cumberland in Canje, where she resides to this day.
Having developed an innate love for helping sick people, Williams joined the nursing profession on February 1, 1978.
“I branched off into that field (nursing), but honestly I had really wanted to be a teacher. I always had that instinct to take care of people and nursing just suited me. I could feel for others and feel for myself at the same time,” she noted.
“It taught me a lot and I met a lot of people with whom I suddenly became family…and they took me into their lives”, she noted. She worked from Mara on the East Bank of Berbice right through to the Upper Corentyne in Skeldon, “at all the hospitals, even Fort Canje (Psychiatric)”.
She was first trained at the New Amsterdam Nursing School and later did her internship at the National Psychiatric Hospital as a Nursing Assistant “…then we had two outstations at that time where I did a stint at Fort Canje and Skeldon, and after that we were stationed wherever there was a call”.
She later worked at numerous health centres which were referred to as Public Health Stations “and they would send you all over just to meet people and see different diseases”. She worked in every ward at the various hospitals except the Dental area, where only specialized persons worked.

 

LIFE AS A NURSE
“When you’re a nurse you care for people as you would like them to care for yourself, because you put yourself into other people’s shoes, and you would tell yourself many a time that this person lying there could be you. So you do your utmost to care for that person and at the same time, it makes you feel great that you could do something and get results. That’s that best part of being a nurse.”
Nursing, she added, afforded her the opportunity to have met so many persons

of all backgrounds.
“The profession does not have any barrier, you give the same professional care that you would give anybody else.”
Everyone knows that nurses are not stationed in one area for too long. They are transferred regularly. But being the good planner Williams was, she catered fully for this. Being moved so frequently meant that neither she nor her husband (who was also away doing his job) were present in the home. But the children were supervised well.
“I was lucky enough not to be too far from home for a very long period of time,” she recounted. Her mother-in-law assisted with the children as well as a maid after her mother-in-law died.
Williams continued working in the public health arena until 1984 after which she went across to and became employed with the Guyana Sugar Corporation’s Rose Hall Estate Primary Health Care Centre (the Dispensary). Her duties there were far different from those in the hospitals.
“You’re essentially your own doctor and own nurse.”
At first, she noted, she needed some time to get used to it and to get familiar with the different types of drugs and knowing the various ailments. It took her three months to do so, since she confidently added that she was a fast learner, “so after that it was not hard”.
She noted having spent some very good years at the Dispensary, but her latter years were marred by a few struggles which she shared.
“Politics took over and that was when things started to fall apart. Things that some persons were doing and got away with, I could not.”
She was entitled to all the benefits of a Staff Nurse at the Dispensary, and received a very handsome salary, but “everybody thought that because my father was very close to the manager, that was why I got in there, but then they realized I was a trained nurse, and things started to look different”.
Williams recalled how she received the best grades during the annual nursing assessments that were carried out by the sugar company.
“For all those 18 years, I was the best nurse around and I used to get the best evaluation– the highest percentage—absent  days, none; no sickness, nothing.”

She added that she received extra pay since having a good evaluation was connected to a raise in salary and she was determined to

continue the positive trend because she loved what she did. Because of all of this, her salary was doubled to what other ordinary nurses in the estate received and this caused some negative reaction.
The medical directors mulled moving other staff out of the facility in order to bring some calm to the situation, but Williams opted to be the one to leave the job early – four years before she should have retired. And so it was, she retired in 2010 at age 56.
Even though she would have liked to continue serving in the job she loved so much, Nurse Williams did not have any regrets, but was admittedly relieved to have come out of such a stressful situation “because you cannot fear going to work, so I thought the best thing was to be out… I miss work, but then we all have to leave one day”. She referred to her early departure as “stepping out in style”.

 

“NO NURSES, JUST PERSONS DRESSED IN WHITE”
Williams, who is unmistakably candid, related her disappointments with the nursing profession in Guyana today. She opined that the current state of the profession “is very, very poor”.
Having visited several hospitals recently, she asserted that “the people who call themselves nurses are not nurses…they’re just persons dressed in white, so I call them the people in white. They do not do nursing. Nursing is taking care of a sick person and the hospital does not have that these days.”
She continued: “The nurses…they do not bathe the patients; the disabled ones, even the ones who can help themselves, they do not help them. We used to bathe, comb their hair, brush their teeth; who cannot get up, we gave them a bed- pan, who cannot walk, we helped them, we fed them– but now you do not see that. In many cases, if the relatives do not go to the hospital to help their loved ones, they are left there, for days!”
“In my day, by the time the visitors come, the wards were cleaned, the patients already cleaned and fed, bathed and everything, the visitors just come and chat and that was it; now they have to come and do everything…sometimes even dressings (for cuts, etc.).”
“If you like a job, you do your utmost; if you keep looking for money, no job will suit you because you will always see a better job with a better price”. “I would never say money is the cause of that…they keep harping that the nurses are not paid properly but the nurses are not doing much.”

 

LIFE AFTER RETIREMENT
The veteran nurse is quite satisfied with her life after retirement. She enjoys going to church, tending to her yard and home, and reading the Bible – things she said she could not have done as she had wanted while being dedicated to her profession.
Call her what you want– dedicated, outspoken, honest, hardworking– Lorna Williams has been in the nursing field for decades, gained a wealth of experience and calls it as she sees it. And if those in authority wish to improve and change the system, then the best thing to do would be to listen to this week’s ‘Special Person’.

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