Nursing: dispassionate profession in Ghana

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For it is often said, the smallest truth is still bigger than a biggest lies. From my personal observations, Ghana is one country in the sub-Saharan Africa, where most teeming youth rush into the nursing profession all in the name of rapid employment opportunity and remunerations. But it is obvious most of these youth in fact don’t have the passion for this reputable career.

I do believe my readers will agree with me that this revered profession; nursing is a profession to serve humanity. The profession is a very complicated one and so, much care must be taken by nurses since human lives “partially” depend on them. Again, I believe this career is not made for faint-hearted people but rather people with much boldness and courage. But now what do we see? People who cannot withstand little pressure at work and also people who cannot tolerate others I mean their own patients. Obviously, most of these youth think the nursing vocation is just a dummy-run hence they’re eventually rushing into it without thinking twice about the intricacies involved. Are we to blame them for their choices?

Besides, most of these teeming youth are going into this profession merely for the monthly allowances paid to them which they commonly called “Allower”. I can emphatically say that most of these nurses have no love or passion for the career. But today, we see them in their numbers nicely dressed-up in their neatly sleek uniforms. Honestly, this write-up is not written to deface the nursing profession but only to share my opinion on what I have noticed in recent times just as the maxim goes “one bad habit often spoils a dozen of good ones”.

Moreover, some of these young nurses mostly don’t exercise patience when attending to or about to attend to a patient. I do ask myself do these nurses’ easily forget or they just don’t understand the pledge they swear which states in stanza three of their code of ethics which reads. “I promise to respect at all times the dignity of the patient in my charge”. I believe some duties of the nurses includes; taking care of whole patient- his mind and body, to provide health education and other health services to the individual, family, society and the nation as a whole for the prevention of deadly diseases and to promote good health. But the question here is do these young nurses in our various hospitals normally have time for all these? Again, I have also noticed that, some of these nurses instead of them doing what are expected from them or attending to a patient they rather spend time on their cell phones talking, surfing the internet or ‘whatsapping’.

Besides, I have witnessed a lot of insolence from some of these young nurses to their patients in most hospitals and clinics. But, to my surprise most of these patients normally keep quiet. Shouting at a patient because that patient needs your service this shows how rude you can be. And as a matter of fact, most of these inpatients and out-patients being mostly maltreated could be their parents for Christ sake. I will not be surprise if some of these nurses travel to the Western countries with these unethical working attitudes. Lest I forget, no wonder recently a Ghanaian nurse in London was accused of a violent act. And she was later charged with violent by abusing a dementia patient. Was she thinking London was Ghana? As the saying goes “Charity begins at home”. Apparently, this is how ill-mannered and disrespectful most of these nurses behave in Ghana hence they travel with these inimical attitudes.

Perhaps, people can attest to the fact that the present behavioural pattern of these young nurses is nothing to write home about as compared to the then behaviours of our older nurses’ in the country. The bottom-line here is that most of the older nurses went into the profession with much dedication and passion so they worked around the clock to save human lives. Because they believe hardworking pays unlike the young nurses’ who only think about their monthly allowance and salaries. Eventually, they mostly end-up venting their anger on innocent patients.

As the saying goes “Good names are better than riches”. I therefore entreat the Ministry of Health (MoH) to make sure nurses’ perform their earthly duties with much dedication and devotion and also adhere to their ethical codes. In conclusion, nurses must be patient-friendly because if these nurses cannot be friendly to these patients then who else can they be friendly to in their field of work?

*By: Adjetey Emmanuel*

* The writer is a Freelance Journalist *

* Email: adjeteyemmanuel@gmail.com*

* Tel: 0247265478.*