Risk under care
As a nurse when I have to say about
nursing profession, then I define it as the most caring and daring
job. Nurse is most of the time visualized as a caring figure and so
it is needless to point out the part played by a nurse in grooming
the health of a patient. For it she has to spend most of her time
with the patient in the hospital and to maintain a close proximity
with them. However this close proximity or intimacy, epecially
regarding the duty in medical ward can be very fatal for her.
Because you never know who has carried which kind of disease until
the right diagnosis is made.
Especially during the vein puncturing or blood drawing, a nurse is
more vulnerable to the blood-borne diseases viz: Hepatitis B,
HIV/AIDS, HBsAg and many more. Yes of course, for the preventive
measure you can wear gloves, however the fact is that it is not
always available in the Nepalese hospital and also wearing gloves
and going to patient’s bed is supposed to be humiliating by
patients. Moreover, there is always urgency from the patient’s part
especially when his/her cannula or drip connection site has been
disconnected. In this situation, you need to rush and get drip
connected as soon as possible. At this time nobody but only God can
protect you from being infected with possible communicable diseases.
If the disease would be a curable one, then the matters could have
been considered but when it is related with the non-curable disease
and especially with the HIV/AIDS, the things go much harder.
Especially a retroviral positive patient is admitted in the final
stage i.e. when the HIV virus has invaded all over the body. In
those final periods of life, the patient of course needs close
monitoring, love, care and encouragement. That’s why we, the nurses
in co-ordination with doctors need to work a lot, otherwise, it
would be against humanity and also against the respected profession.
A whole lot of tests ranging from blood, stool, urine, ECG, USG,
X-ray to MRI, CT-scan, Echo etc has to be taken. During this period,
the intensity of contamination from the equipments is very much high
and a bit of carelessness may also prove to be a fatal one. That’s
why, though we really have sympathy for such patients, it’s really a
very hard and risky job for us to deal with them.
Therefore, I see the essentiality of drawing government’s vision
towards having separate centers for hospitality care to retroviral
positive patients where there are lots of precautions and facilities
for the victim as well. I can realize most of the people blaming
nurses and other health personnel for neglecting or dominating HIV
infected patient esp. which I say is absolutely wrong because
blaming is easy but analyzing the situation from our stance is a
complicated job in itself.
-Rachana Bhattarai
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