Do you remember the time when a Filipino
nurse was hailed by US President Obama because of her unconditional act of
saving helpless babies during super storm Sandy?
To quote, this is what the president said, “We should follow the example of a New York City nurse named Menchu Sanchez. When Hurricane Sandy plunged her hospital into darkness, she wasn’t thinking about how her own home was faring,” Obama stated during his address before a joint session with the Congress. “Her mind was on the 20 precious newborns in her care and the rescue plan she devised that kept them all safe.”
But President Obama is not the only one who
gets to notice Filipino nurses. These “angels in the sickroom” are positively acknowledged elsewhere in the world. But why is that so?
What makes Filipino nurses who they are?
What kind of training do they undergo in the Philippines?
And what makes them master the art of
caring above every other native nurse?
Few of the answers are found in this
English-translated article from the popular and well-loved Bob Ong Quotes. You
may tend to giggle and LOL at the scenarios, but the following reality is
actually the pitiful truth of the state of the Philippine nation.
Healthcare
in Philippine Public Hospitals
“You are a nurse in the Philippines if you
can relate to this:
A nursing student once asked me, ‘Sir,
where can we get a URINAL?’
My answer went, ‘My dear, you are not in a
private hospital. Go and look for an empty Intravenous (IV) plastic bottle, cut
it, make sure the edges are not left sharp, and let your patient use that as a
container for his urine. That’s also what you have to do when your patient is
vomiting and needs an EMESIS BASIN.’
Do you need to give IV medications but do
not have an AMPULE BREAKER? It would be difficult to break the glass; but don’t
worry, just use your BANDAGE SCISSORS. Use it as a saw to file the neck of the
ampule, and surely it will now be easier to open.
Are you performing suctioning but your
elderly patient tends to bite the suction catheter? Get a syringe, remove the
needle and plunger, wrap it with clean gauze, and allow him to bite that
instead. It will now be easier for you to suction. But of course, don’t forget to
take it away right after. It is better that way than to purchase a BITE BLOCK,
since your patient already has the scarce means to purchase such.
Even
More Resourcefulness
You are about to do blood transfusion….and
you need a COMPRESSOR because the transfusion won’t flow? DON’T LOOK FOR WHAT
ISN’T AROUND! Use a BLOOD PRESSURE CUFF..
Do you need to cover an IV Fluid bottle
because its contents are sensitive to light? WRAP THE BOTTLE AND TUBES WITH
CARBON PAPER..
No hot water bag nor ice pack? Use RUBBER
HAND GLOVES…
…and speaking of gloves…these can also be placed into the autoclave to be reused…gloves are still good to go AS LONG THERE ARE NO HOLES YET!!!
…and speaking of gloves…these can also be placed into the autoclave to be reused…gloves are still good to go AS LONG THERE ARE NO HOLES YET!!!
Now, if you need a FACE MASK to ‘nebulize’
a pediatric patient, and because there’s no supply and your patient cannot afford
one, JUST TAKE A CLEAN BOND PAPER, SHAPE IT INTO A CONE, AND ATTACH IT TO THE
KIT USING TAPE…OTHER NURSES USE STYROFOAM CUPS, these are much durable though!!
Hehe..
There’s a lot of hospital admissions and
lesser OXYGEN TANKS available…what a head nurse usually does is to split the
main tube, then attach the nasal cannulas to the two patients…that way more
people can benefit!
No more IV stands?? The common intervention is to… ‘GET AN ALUMINUM WIRE… (So what do I do, hang myself? Hahaha No!) ATTACH IT
TO THE CEILING, MAKE SURE IT IS SECURELY DONE, THEN HOOK THE IV BOTTLE TO
THAT!!
So that’s what the nurse did, and jokingly
prayed… ‘Lord, please don’t make it to the point where even the BEDS need to be
improvised…
...hmm there still ARE enough WHEEL CHAIRS though, I think those are better
resting places if more sick patients arrive..’
During Code Blue… ‘Where’s the CARDIAC
BOARD???!!!’
‘ Alright, wait..here it is, here it is…’
‘ Whoa, PLYWOOD??!! Where did you get
that?’
‘got that from the nearby window sill..’
OR if the patient is a child, make use of
the wood from the BEDSIDE TABLE!... at least the patient gets to be revived.. (think)
Now, Mr Patient can’t pay for a MECHANICAL
VENTILATOR…well, our powers can no longer reach that far!!! So all day long,
the watcher must use the AMBU BAG (BVM). He can just do alternate rounds with
another of the patient’s watchers… but what if there’s only 1 watcher? Well, what
else, SUPER NURSE to the rescue!! ‘Uhm Sir… allow me to do that even for an
hour, so you can go rest and have your lunch first’..
The difficult part is when the relatives
decide to sign the HAMA form because they no longer have the means to pay even if
they already belong to Charity Patient Class D….
...oh life is so hard.
A nurse supervisor once said, ‘You’re in a
government hospital, if you follow the ideal measures and interventions, you’re
never reviving your patient.’”
This is also true in the public ward
settings of a private hospital. Many of these patients struggle to survive. That is why
getting sick can be the worst thing that could happen to their budget or even their
life; because outside the hospital, feeding the right quantities and qualities
to their families is even barely attained.
How These
Affect Filipino Nurses
Nurses who have never gone to the
Philippines nor any other third world country, might simply shake their heads
at these scenarios. Some may even find it funny, especially in its original
vernacular form, but these circumstances have forced Filipino nursing students
and staff nurses alike to harness their analytical abilities. Imagine having to
deal with these every day - endless admissions with such pitiful lack of
resources in crazy shifting schedules at a meager salary.
So by the time they get to go abroad and
experience the ideal settings of patient healthcare using the latest technology
from foreigners who have much to pay, they find their duties to be a dip in the
tub. And since Filipino nurses have been used to such stressful situations, they tend to go beyond what is assigned to them to make their
patients feel extra comfy.
How about you, what do you think nurses from
the Philippines have in common which make them that way? Have you had an enlightening
experience with a Filipino nurse?
----
(Consider me spamming with the excessive
exclamation points and caps, but I preferred to retain the punctuation marks and all
to get as close as possible to the original vernacular form.)
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