Nurses in Barbados

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“UNDER SIEGE.” This is the headline that The Nation newspaper splashed across their back page in today’s print edition (don’t bother checking their website, the story isn’t there.) It desribes the disgusting situation that currently exists for nurses in Barbados. Nurses, folks, nurses. The people that look after us, our familes, our relatives and our friends, when we fall ill and have to visit clinics and hospitals.

God (or The Great Pumkin) only knows that their jobs aren’t tough enough as is (in Barbados and all around the world) and that their pay and working conditions are less than what they’re really worth. I hear you: “Some of the nurses are not nice and kind and gentle.” I hear you. There may be a few miserable ones out there, after all, they are only human, but the majority of them must be good, else we would’ve probably have gotten rid of the whole lot of ‘em by now, don’t you think?

So, now we know what a valuable service the provide to us and the hell they have to go through on a daily basis, why is it then that this sort of thing happens in Barbados (and possibly elsewhere?)

From The Nation newspaper (because they didn’t bother to post this story online.)

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UNDER SIEGE

Nurses being attacked on and off duty, says BNA head

by DONNA SEALY

 NURSES are being attacked physically and verbally on and off the Queen Elizabeth Hospital’s (QEH) compound, and they are sick of it.

President of the Barbados Nurses’ Association (BNA), Paulette Drakes, told the media yesterday after a service at St Thomas Parish Church to start Nurses’ Week, that they were being confronted on and off duty. She appealed for greater protection for the health care providers.

She said they were being attacked while on the wards by patients and relatives, at bus stops and in car parks, especially after reports that they recieved salary increases.

“Nurses get beaten, they get their cars broken into. Nurses get their bags snatched right on the compound too. I had a nurse who was held at gunpoint [and] a patient brought a dog on the ward for a nurse. “I have nurses who have been standing at that bus stop [outside the New Testatment Church on River Road] and when the others were gone [boarded buses], one nurse was left there and her bags and everything were taken at gun- and-knife-point. “I need safety for my nurses and that is just one side, physical safety,” Drakes said.

Fist fights

She and other nurses spoke of incidents where patients hit nurses on the head with objects, and of patients and relatives “picking” fist fights.

“We certainly need to have everybody that comes through those doors photographed or something [so] that when you start to describe [the incident/perpetrator], they can roll back the photos and say, ah ha, that’s the one. “Safety is of primary importance where we are concerned.”

Provide transport

Drakes also called for a proper transportation service for nurses, especially for those who worked late shifts and had to go to distant parishes like St Andrew and St Lucy.

“The nurses association already had a transport system where we asked the hospital to provide transport for nurses and they do that. “They go down to pick up those nurses coming from ‘Town and they take down the ones [who] come off the ward at 9 p.m. But what about those [who] come off at half past ten or 11 or 12…? I feel that those nurses should be taken home,” she said.

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Digusting. That’s how we treat our nurses. Disgusting.

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