The Awakening of Nurses : A Good Omen to Nursing Profession. By Nurse Yahya L.O
Let me start by drawing our attention to this old raggae song sang by Majek- Fashek titled,”So Long”. This inspirational song that I will base my talk goes thus;
“Arise from the sleep Africa”
Arise from the sleep America
It’s what to be done Africa
It’s what to be done America
If we unite we will be free
So long it’s tool long
We’ve been sitting for so long
We’ve been fooled around for so long
If we just remove the Africa & America and replace it with “nurses”, then this song is a reminder for us as it becomes,” arise from your sleep nurses”.I there by call on us to rise up and be energetic ,now that we have even woken up from our long time slumber.
The nobility of nursing ,naturally ,is stainless. It is only in Nigeria that we have challenges staining the profession. Nursing itself has no problem but us,nurses. In my previous write up,I delineated that our past leaders are behind the inherited ordeal we are battling hitherto to surmount. We had better known the history of nursing in Nigeria as history helps to know the past and compare it with the present in order to predict and plan for the future. Many of us attribute the challenges we are currently facing to the government ,NANNM,other health professionals in the health team and so on, based on our individual perception. The time we were asleep, they had planned a system which they currently operate against us,and has really affected and still affecting us as I see no reason why all universities offering Medicine can’t for Nursing. The better accessibility to BSc nursing compared to the past has immensely helped to awaken nurses and nursing,in which it was an albatross for the past nurses. People’s perception towards nurses has changed unlike the era of “gallipot nurses”.
Following the trend of m the song,it is worthy of notice to say that we had been sitting and fooled by other health professionals. We allowed them to trample upon our rights. Thank God we are now awake. If we arborize health team,Nurses should be ,if not,the root that bears the weight of the entire parts of a tree. This depicts how important nurses are. In the past,people believed any woman or man working in the hospital to be Nurse or Doctor respectively, before pharmacists and lab. Scientists joined the race. Today, it is disheartening and painful that the ranking in a descending order is doctor,pharmacist, lab.scientist, nurses and so on. The questions are,what happened? What has really happened to us to deserve this? Are we sleeping?To answer these tautological questions, we need to go back to the history of our nurses in the past -the time nurses fell asleep and compare to us,contemporaneous nurses, then predict and plan for the future of nursing and prospective nurses in Nigeria to know if they will also blame us or not.
Adeyemi (2014) rigorously answered these questions as to why nurses are where we are today as follows:
“In the past, nurses ranked second to doctors while the pharmacist ranked third. But because of rivalry and wrangling among the nurses, the public image of the Nigerian nurses dropped when the Nigeria Nurses Association appealed to the Federal Government to bring down the salary of the united kingdom trained nurses to the level of the locally trained nurses thus the harmonization of both cadres was affected.
While the nurses were clamouring for the downgrading of the united kingdom trained nurses, the pharmacist thought that all locally trained pharmacist be paid same salary as the united kingdom trained counterparts. So,the pharmacists entered service at the senior service level while nurses entered at the junior scale. The image of nurses went down beyond description and many qualified nurses departed the country to united kingdom and United States of America.
The lowering of status of the nurse led to countrywide industrial unrest and salary agitation leading to Elmwood award in 1968 which raises the status of nurses to Senior Officer Grade GL.07.
The public image of the nurse as an inferior officer in the civil service was redeemed to an extent. The Nigerian nurse of today became over worked and poorly remunerated with a nurse to 30 patients whereas the recommended WHO was one nurse to four patients.
The Nigerian nurses believed they are over worked and not well remunerated hence the brain drain. The public view their actions as unpatriotic and unbecoming of nurses who are often regarded as one of the most highly paid professionals in the public services. The nurses are the most visible and conspicuous of all the health team providers that the whole people blame more often than not, is heaped on the poor nurses when they failed to control their temper under pressure.” Nurses are indispensable to the health sector but not well valued.
Is it not appalling and pitiable that we all need to shit a brick? Well,as nurses with the love of nursing in our hearts,its revival lies in our hands. It does not require stress or money. If we still follow the trend of the song, then we need nothing but ” UNITY”. “If we unite,we will be free”,as he sang. One of my classmates in basic school of nursing would say,” unity we stand, divided we fall.” With unity among us we can make the soil of nursing fertile again for it to grow and for us to all enjoy and stop grumbling. With unity ,we can fight for our rights even without JOHESU. It is high time we stopped condemning Nursing council and NANNM. We can correct and make suggestions to them as I believe they are part of us as evident by the updates given to us by our amiable comrade. With unity Nursing and Nurses will continue to soar. Let us give our fullest support to this on going strike. Victory is ascertained!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great Nurses!!! Up JOHESU!!!
