We all know what happened: Cynthia Villar, Winnie Monsod, a killer question, and a roadkill answer that pissed off a significant portion of the Philippines' 700,000 nurses.
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| Nursing youth leader Alvin Dakis comments on Mrs. Villar's allegedly derogatory comments regarding "room nurses". |
Truth #2: And let's face it - you're probably as poor as I am.
Truth #3: If you get stuck with an idiot health care provider - an idiot nurse, for instance - then there is a very big probability that you'll have a very bad time.
Truth #4: A safe nurse is a smart nurse, because a smart nurse knows the hows and the whys behind patient care. A smart nurse will be careful of rendering patient care so as not to hurt his or her client.
Truth #5: No, you don't spent most of your hospital time with doctors. They pop in for a few minutes to see how you're doing, and leave the rest of the caring to "room nurses"
Truth #6: If your nurse is an idiot, you might end up in the morgue instead of going home. Seriously. Expiration. Death. Meeting the Maker, if you believe in that stuff.
Don't believe me? Here are 10 stupid ways an idiot nurse can seriously hurt you.
1. During the first the first hour of a typical morning duty, a "Room Nurse" will be going around, checking your IV fluid, making sure that it is properly calibrated. If an Idiot Room Nurse regulates a patient with cardiac insufficiency's IV fluid at 25 drops per minute, instead of 10 drops, then the patient may suffer fluid volume overload, which will stress the heart, which will cause it to need more and more oxygen to keep on functioning, which the diseased heart may not be able to provide in the first place. End stage? Heart attack.
2. Here's a classic example, and one that's been going around Facebook for a few days now: bolus injection of potassium chloride. Trivia: KCl is used for lethal injections.
3. When a bedridden patient goes into cardiac arrest and the Idiot Nurse performs CPR and forgets the friggin' CPR board (which you put under the patient), said Idiot Nurse can break the patient's ribs and the fractured bones can stab the lungs. Ouch.
4. Administering an IM injection without making sure that there are no air bubbles. Hello thrombus and embolus!
5. Getting an indwelling urinary catheter is painful to begin with. The catheter is held in place by inflating a balloon which sits in your bladder with sterile water. Now imagine the idiot nurse pulling the damn catheter out of your hole down there WITHOUT deflating the balloon. The pain is enough to give you nightmares of holy hell for several nights, I imagine.
6. Turning stroke patient q2 (every 2 hours) without pulling the side rails up is asking for an accident. Hala sige, ihulog ang pasyente!
7. Cleaning your open would sans gloves after taking care of a patient who defecated. Oh yes, it's an infection waiting to happen.
8. If your reproductive health nurse is an idiot and counsels you to use combined oral contraceptives regardless of your sky-rocketing blood pressure, you're going to have a bad time.
9. During surgery, an idiot nurse might just hastily count and recheck the instruments and materials used. You know what that means? You might have a used gauze left in your tummy, and no one would know any better...that is, until you're sick again.
Photo courtesy of Nathalia Laguitan, RN. Nursing students are trained in special areas such as the National Center for Mental Health, where they learn not just the physical science of health, but the behavioral aspect as well. Being a holistic practice which focuses on the entirety of the person instead of just parts, nursing is a demanding course as well as a profession. Have you ever tried running after a mental health patient before? Nurses might have to do that. I did.
10. If an idiot nurse gives a schizophrenic patient a pencil in art therapy, and said patient goes berserk, then, friends and neighbors, we might have injury in our hands. Several, for that matter.
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| The hubbaloo involving Cynthia Villar's controversial comment about "Room Nurses" has barely left the frying pan, when this silly little girl made a mistake of running off with her (mouth) keyboard, this time calling nurses idiots and asserting that we are "hindi kawalan". Oo nga naman, we're just roughly 700,000 of the population and a major source of remittance that's keeping the country's economy afloat. 'Di nga talaga kawalan. This screen cap is currently being circulated around Facebook and Twitter. Little girl, you better pray that you never EVER get an idiot nurse if you get hospitalized. |
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| Photo from Shane Magsino, RN. This was taken during our oath taking ceremony at PRC. Before being able to actually take the oath, though, we had to wait outside, in the blistering heat, wearing our thick white uniforms, from 7AM to around 2PM. We were trained to be patient as well as to be smart. It takes a lot of brain to be a nurse. It takes a lot of heart too. |
Truth #7: We worked our arses off to get to where we are, to earn our BSN degree, to pass the board exam regardless of typhoon, heart break, flood, personal misery, earth quake and whatever else that was thrown at us. We are NURSES. We do not deserve to be called idiots. We do not deserve to have the word "lang" or "only" next to our profession. Because if we did, then it might be fair to warn you : be very, very afraid.
Invite to readers: Please feel free to add more to the 10 Stupid Ways through sharing your ideas in the comment box below. Despite the annoyance brought about by what has been happening in the past few days, that doesn't mean we can't laugh about it a little, right? And maybe we'll scare these people enough - these people who are supposed to be making our training better and more competent, instead of settling for "hindi naman kailangan masyadong magaling". Maybe we'll scare them into doing their jobs.
I haven't given up hope yet. Have you?
Sociologically speaking there is a lot that still needs to be said on this issue. The mentality of "just a nurse" is highly problematic and, quite frankly, idiotic. However, we have to also recognize that the core reason for such a mentality is the hundred thousand plus unemployed nurses and the hundreds of thousands of nursing graduates that were not able to pass the board exam. This is all due to poor regulation of nursing colleges and unrestricted process of licencees. In many places around the world (USA included) there are pre-entry exams and weed-out processes to ensure that low-performing students are taken out of the process so that only the best are able to graduate and graduation almost guarantees licence.
ReplyDeleteThis means there are far fewer unemployed nurses and far fewer unlicensed nursing graduates and the prestige of nursing is maintained in the social consciousness.
Therefore, the onus of repairing this problem lies squarely upon the shoulders of the critics who continue to allow such a corrupt system to exist and exploit Filipino aspiring nurses.