“A good nurse can make a difficult situation bearable”—Lao Tzu.
One of the most thankless jobs and an undesirable one for many, is that of the paramedics. After doctors, those who occupy highly important positions in any clinic or hospital are the nurses who are supposed to attend to patients undergoing or likely to undergo medical treatment. Their skill and compassion are indispensable for a positive impact on the health of individuals and communities.
Expressing his appreciation for a nurse’s difficult profession Michael Ignatieff, a Canadian writer and politician once said: “Politics is a tough game. But would I change places with a trauma nurse in an emergency ward on a busy Saturday night? No way. There are lots of jobs in the world that are tougher than politics. And politicians and people who've done it need to remember that.”
Paramedics are fundamental to health care. Doctors and surgeons would never be able to function effectively without their support and assistance. Health facilities’ primary employees are these men and women whose expertise in different areas of medical treatment can never be undermined.
Tasks like giving an injection, inserting a cannula, bandaging a wound, etc. require practice which they are used to where even the doctors sometimes find themselves in an awkward position. Besides, their immediate interaction with the patients and their families means that they are responsible for not only instructing them about self-care but also providing them with emotional support in addressing their concerns.
Except for some, people usually adopt occupations like that of janitors, office assistants, teachers, nurses, etc. as a last resort when they are unable to fit in the more privileged ones. In Pakistan, however, women belonging to traditional and conservative households are advised to take up teaching or nursing, if they are allowed to leave their homes.
To do what nobody else will do, in a way that nobody else can, in spite of all we go through, is to be a nurse
Boys who are unable to find suitable work also sometimes end up becoming part of the paramedical staff. This means that nurses recruited here are mostly those who take up this profession reluctantly under compulsion and not with an altruistic approach to serving humanity, which is actually the underlying objective.
Anyways, whether by will or by force, there can be no question about the amount of learning, labour, and dedication that are required to be an ordinary nurse and multiplied umpteen times, a competent one. Whether by day or by night, these service providers toil hard to make the lives of the suffering a wee bit comfortable, relieve them of pain, or administer medicines to quicken up their healing process.
These are never easy tasks, particularly when patients are intractable, stubborn, and difficult to manage. Where normal human beings get disgusted by their own excrement and vomit, these noble workers unhesitatingly handle all such waste without as much as a frown. Words fall short in appreciation of the wonderful work of paramedics!
As a mark of respect, our attitude towards nurses should depict a conscious approach rather than a taken-for-granted stance that nurses are merely employees who are paid to serve. Like other virtuous professionals, they too deserve the same honour and dignity. We need to be more sensitive towards them whether we are in the capacity of patients or their attendants. Where nurses are trained to deal with difficult patient demands, it is more devastating for them to manage their unruly escorts.
Many incidents have been reported in which people use abusive language and have even physically manhandled nurses, especially in public institutions in Pakistan. These usually go unreported because of hospital policies but their occurrences have given way to research conducted on small scales yet are enough to raise serious concerns. An excerpt from one study in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa conducted in 2022 is as follows:
“Females made up two-thirds of the study participants (64.7 percent, n = 66). Almost half of the participants (45.1%) had less than five years of experience. The majority of participants (92.2 percent) were verbally abused. More than half of the participants had been exposed more than three times, 35.3% and 31.4% had experienced this in night and morning shifts respectively. Only 39.2% of nurses were counseled by hospital management after workplace violence (WPV).
‘Conclusions: The emergency department at KPK Hospital experiences workplace violence quite regularly, according to this study. A major blow to the nursing profession is caused by the poor level of job satisfaction among ED (emergency department) nurses.”
An earlier study of the Outdoor and Indoor Emergency of Jinnah Hospital, Lahore from March to June 2016 with a sample size of 150 concludes:
“The establishment of health care workers in public hospitals in Lahore is often subject to aggression and violence, and it is associated with many adverse consequences, including high levels of stress. Appropriate precautionary measures, including occupational support, require a safer environment for hospitals.”
These studies are sufficient to highlight dilemmas faced by the paramedics of our country. The majority hospitals have a limited number of beds for patients but hardly impose any restriction on several attendants nor adhere to visiting hours because of which there is a tendency for nurses to leave care to the patient’s relatives. Rather than performing duties themselves, they expect the attendants to administer medicines, etc.
Consequently, hospitals become overcrowded with a constant flow of related and unrelated people that create obstacles during working hours besides causing furor on minor and resolvable issues. Private hospitals do enforce some rules but then here the number of staff members is less than the real demand therefore dependency is greater on patients’ families.
Authorities need to understand the importance of paramedics in the health sector. They must be given ample security, a good salary, access to counseling, and improved self-esteem. Nurses too should realise that their profession is more than just their source of income. Theirs too is an extremely noble job requiring compassion and humanity otherwise Rawsi Williams would not have said: “To do what nobody else will do, in a way that nobody else can, in spite of all we go through, is to be a nurse.”