HONOUR, RESPECT AND APPROPRIATELY REWARD OUR NURSES

May 31, 2020 Consumer Concerns, News

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CONSUMER CONCERNS:

By Pat Dial

May is the month in which many of the most important anniversaries of the world are celebrated. One of the most notable is International Nurses Day which is commemorated every year on May 12th.
The theme of this year’s commemoration is “A Voice to Lead – Nursing the World to Health”. May 12th was chosen as the date of International Nurses Day as it is the birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. This year also celebrates her 200th birth anniversary.
Until Florence Nightingale’s work during the Crimean War of the mid-19th century, nursing was not regarded as a systematized profession. For thousands of years, men and women of compassion used whatever medications were available, often improvising their own treatments to treat the sick. Although older systems of medicine had evolved in the ancient civilizations such as the Egyptian and Greek, the only one of these which has survived and is still used is the Ayurvedic. Indeed, many Ayurvedic medications and techniques have been adopted by modern medicine.
The doctors practising these ancient systems also did the work which today is assigned to nurses. Up to mid-19th century, almost all who practised healing were men.
In the mid-nineteenth century when Britain was the world’s greatest power, she was fighting a war in the Crimea in Russia and the wounded were placed in a field hospital where the conditions were little better than if they were left on the battlefield as the wounded were left at Solferino.
It was the sight of the sufferings of the wounded soldiers on the battlefield at Solferino that awakened Henri Dunant’s compassion and led to the founding of the Red Cross.
In respect of Crimea, a number of patriotic young women volunteered to go and nurse the wounded soldiers and among these was Florence Nightingale. Florence Nightingale took charge of the hospital, established a strict code of discipline, enforced proper hygiene, used rational techniques of treatment and revolutionized the hospital in a short time.
The soldiers were so grateful to her that when she went through the wards at night, the soldiers would kiss her shadow. Her methods created modern nursing and nursing as a profession.
In the 1840’s, the colonial authorities had established a Seaman’s Hospital on the site of the present Georgetown Public Hospital which quickly evolved into the Georgetown Hospital in the 1850’s and soon adopted many of the disciplines and techniques of Florence Nightingale.
The matrons were usually recruited in England while the nurses were locally recruited and trained. Until the beginning of the 20th century, nursing was regarded as a prestigious profession and it attracted young women from the middle classes.
Guyanese nursing thus began with the highest standards.
There were two government hospitals in Guyana until independence and patients from the countryside had to travel to Georgetown or New Amsterdam for medical help.
In the villages and the sugar plantations, there grew up a body of nurses who consisted of nurses who had worked and trained at the government hospitals, a few who had returned from the United States driven back home by the Great Depression and a number who were self-trained. On the sugar estates mostly, were a number of Indian women known as ‘chamaines’ who delivered babies and dealt with ailments like gastroenteritis, diarrhea, “narra” and since they knew of the bone and muscle structure practised as de facto physiotherapists.
These village nurses were known countrywide and were sought after more than doctors since they had earned a reputation of being able to successfully treat all common ailments such as colds, fevers, constipation, whooping cough, measels, chicken pox and so on.
With the growth of the colony’s health system, more nurses were recruited and trained but all nurses, whether they worked in the hospitals or practiced privately in the villages or elsewhere regarded themselves as being members of the profession.
It was in this spirit and led by the older nurses, that they established the Nurses Association in 1928. This was the first Nurses Association in the Caribbean and one of the early ones in the world.
Today, nurses form 50% of the health professionals employed by the state and these together with the nurses employed by the private hospitals do give nurses a majority of the health professionals in the country.
The onslaught of the COVID-19 Pandemic has forcefully brought to the fore the value of nurses to the society and their compassion and great courage are widely recognized and appreciated. They risk their lives every day and the comfort and well-being of their families since they are in the front line in the fight against the Coronavirus.
The public have become more conscious than formerly of the comparatively poor pay and conditions under which nurses serve and there is growing support that their conditions of work and remuneration be improved and that training opportunities be widened and made more available.
The leaders of the country have pledged themselves to improving the conditions of nurses and it is expected when the country returns to normalcy, this will be done.

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