Facebook has become my Hindu and Times of India as I just fly through the pics and hardly read anything useful. Half sleepy after a 36-hour duty drill, doing my pre-sleep facebook yoga, a post suddenly rang a bell. It made me sit up with my MacBook writing down.
Few years back, five to be precise, I was the duty intern of the ICU and at 3 o’clock in the morning when I was mumbling about a sleepless night I saw something that I could never forget. The nurses who were having their dinner few hours back, just sprang up to go on a full round washing all the patients up, powdering their backs and specially plaiting their hair to perfection! And none of them seemed to bother about their sleep or food. Many a time these women in white have made me wonder “Why do they have to do all these?”
Another day recently, here at Madurai, I had to attend a patient who collapsed and to complete the death paperwork. While we were waiting for my professor, the nurse started a conversation, lamenting that she is overburdened and it went to her experience at a corporate ICU. “Did you actually leave a corporate work set up and joined here? ” “Oh sir, don’t ask about it. It used to be cruel, delayed salaries… high expectations… it used to be a total pain…for every unclean plaster, one day- off will be cut, and the same for every bedsore, unclean mouth after feeding…I used to stand by the side of patients buttock holding the oxygen hose in my hand after spraying insulin over a bedsore”
As a profession, comparing to a doctor, the demand for integrity, dedication to work and most importantly patience is significantly higher for a nurse. Let's take a hundred doctors and nurses, say junior doctors and student and young staff, with similar tough work drill, the proportion of nurses who show it in their face is far less than the proportion of doctors – that is exactly the beauty of it! Day and night, whatever you ask, there is hardly a wry face or a disinterested reply. Toggling between hectic work schedules, family commitments, the sacrifices they make are hardly bothered about and we have been just taking them for granted.
What it takes to be a nurse is almost similar to what it takes to be a doctor – from the study period, professional ragging, harassment by seniors and long-haul duties. But at the end of the journey, the position a nurse gets is definitely less than what she deserves. These women are always are the unsung heroes of medicine! On International Nurses Day, Take a bow, people!
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