Nigerian Nurses Are Not Doctors’ Assistants –Professor Adejumo

Professor Prisca Olabisi Adejumo, a lecturer at the University of Ibadan, has said that nurses and midwives are not doctors’ assistants and should be rated appropriately in the country’s healthcare delivery system.

Delivering her inaugural lecture at the University she said, “Nurses and midwives are not doctors’ assistants. They are health professionals in their own right, with specific skills and training that enable them to perform a wide variety of essential roles. They make up half of the health workforce; they are close to people and critical too health care teams”.

While quoting the words of Dr. Tedro, she made a veiled reference to the dichotomy in the nation’s healthcare delivery system where nurses are still battling to be rated like their colleagues in Western Europe and North America.

Adejumo, a professor of nursing science in the University while delivering the university’s 452nd inaugural lecture, argued that nurses are the gate-keepers in the health care delivery system, adding that “understanding who a nurse is also vital in the bid to know who the nurse is”.

She explained, “A nurse is a gate-keeper to life at birth and death, an angel who opens the eyes of a newborn and gently closes the eyes of a dying man. It is indeed a big privilege to be the first to witness the beginning and the end of life”.

In the inaugural lecture which was laced with her research findings in HIV and cancer counseling, Professor Adejumo called for adequate financial support for nurses to enable them carry out the enormous task of nursing the nursed.

“Adequate support in terms of finance and personnel must be made available for the nurse not only to nurse the nursed but also not to transit to become the nursed,” she suggested.

Quoting from one of her research findings, Professor Adejumo argued that exhaustion due to work pressure from few nurses attending to a large number of patients could lead to “medication administration errors among nurses”, hence the need for adequate personnel in healthcare facilities.

She also called for adequate remuneration for nurses to stop the financial pressure that could make them “transit to become the nursed”.

Professor Adejumo’s inaugural lecture entitled: “Riding through risks into new frontier: The nurse, the nursed and nursing” was witnessed by a mammoth crowd made up of academics, her professional colleagues and her students who took turns to hug her after the presentation.
Source: Independent Newspaper