Our nurses, our future

May 12, 2025 Editorial, News

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Editorial…

Kaieteur News-  Today is International Nurses Day (IDN) – a global healthcare event that is celebrated on the 12th of May every year. The day recognises Florence Nightingale’s birth anniversary, the founder of modern nursing, and aims to give recognition to the profession’s influence on the economy, society, and culture while encouraging nurses’ acceptance, support, and inclusion on a global scale. This year the day is being observed under the theme: “Our Nurses. Our Future. Caring for nurses strengthens economies”. This theme highlights how crucial it is to promote nurses’ health and wellness. It emphasizes how important a healthy nursing workforce is for providing high-quality care, as well as for improving healthcare systems and increasing economic resilience on a global scale. The theme also urges immediate funding and workable solutions to safeguard nurses from emotional, mental, and physical difficulties while making sure they are respected, valued, and supported.

In Guyana we need nurses more than ever now. They are worth their weight in gold, in some instances, way more than that precious commodity could ever be valued. As they hold us close to their sights and attentions, many times to their hearts, we must reciprocate also in remembering them and holding them dear. As we remember them today, we applaud them and hold them aloft for their untiring giving on our behalf when most needed.

We see them quietly passing by in their starched whites and blues. Let us not take them for granted anymore, these who dedicate their lives to more than a career, but towards the lifetime of a calling. It is a special one that now attracts to an increasing degree more and more young men, which is another encouraging development. Though things are better than before, it is not the most rewarding or revered of professions in Guyana, which should be improved upon in both areas. The need is, also, for the presence of a broader cross-section of our population to cultivate the required interest to want to do something by living that professional life and making an important contribution. On the scale of importance, there are few things, if any, that can compete with or surpass in terms of one’s quality of life. The competence and great care of nurses make that possible during times of personal and family health crisis.

A caring nurse makes for a lot of healing, much peace of mind when needed the most. We must cherish these presences, these comforting voices and the gentle ministrations that come along with them. We must think of these nightingales that float in the hazes of consciousness, the sharp pangs of our pains wracked by fevers diverse and machines mishandled by reckless men. They toil quietly in the heat of days, amidst the hotter angers that sometimes blaze from those cared for by hand and those who come demanding more than their share. It can be a thankless undertaking, in the many bloody, sickly, dirty tasks and responsibilities that go hand in hand with the cleaning and soothing and the giving of hope, when none may be left.
We at this newspaper have received numerous complaints from nurses in the past about their poor working condition. Unlike teachers and other categories of public servants, nurses very seldom complain about their poor working conditions, they do their work diligently, which means the public does not know that many nurses in the public hospitals are overwhelmed and are suffering silently from fatigue due to the fact that they watch many patients die from simple diseases that should not have resulted in death in this modern era.
Others are under severe stress, and as the health system buckles under pressure, they face the difficult task to serve those in need of care. Some have simply resigned themselves to the fact that there is nothing they could do to make changes and improve the situation. Many of our nurses in the public hospitals across the county have related that they are trying to do their best with very little resources to ensure accessibility to health services to those in need. Some have resorted to stringent measures in order to cope with the daily increase in trauma cases which range from stabbing injuries to gunshot wounds and traffic fatalities. In some cases, elective surgeries have to be postponed due to shortages of staff and resources. As a result, some patients have to be referred to private hospitals, but only if they can afford the cost. Others, especially the poor, are painfully rejected by the private hospitals because of the lack of money.

Finally, nurses have expressed concern about their safety when caring for patients from their communities who show up with gunshot wounds. Many are known in their communities and are fearful of being caught in the cross hairs of reprisal killings. Also, priority is always given to trauma cases which place other forms of patient care on hold, thus causing those patients and their relatives to become upset and rowdy, which sometimes poses a threat to nurses. This is the case especially for those working in A&E departments. Such fear has compounded an already stressful work environment.
There is a saying that in the army, it is the sergeants who run the show and make the differences that count. There is a similar sentiment that in the hospital, it is the nurses who deliver and make them run. Doctors come and go, sometimes before their presences could even register through the traumas that afflict, the chemicals intended to cure. But nurses are there all the time, be it waking or sleeping, in pain or in readying to say goodbye. It is a time that would be remembered for whatever is left in a lifetime, in the soft rustle of their soothing nearness, the touch of their fingers, the blessed reliefs that they bring when we cry out with our agonies that come from our hurts.
We pray that God will bless the work of their hands and their hearts will always be about what is compassionate, noble, and life-giving. International Nurses Day should be more than one day, since every day is worthy of a celebration of their life-saving efforts.

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