Nursing

Next Monday onwards, I will be in my third year in Nursing and in NP. Throughout these two years, I have seen many things - how people treat nurses and peoples' perceptions towards nursing.

Nursing... is not a sai gang or 'dirty job' as society say. To me, Nursing is a very noble job. A job meant for people with big hearts. Society say that Nursing is a course deem for 'losers' because they did not do well for their 'O' levels. But no. Nursing, like Engineering, have high cut-off points because these jobs are in demand. But let's not talk about Engineering because nobody look down on engineers.

Nursing is a very easy course to get in. Put it as one of your courses regardless of position, bam, you are in. The point is, can you survive? Even if you can survive, will you be granted the license to practice?

It is not easy to study Nursing, you have to give up things which your fellow campus mates have. For instance - time and holidays. More often than not, we start lessons earlier than other courses, we end later than them, part of our holidays are exchanged for clinical attachments and we do not have a single weekday whereby we have no classes (unless it is a PH, even if so, we have make up classes).

Because within the three years duration, we have to have the basics at our fingertips, the knowledge, the theories and most importantly, we have to be competent to be a staff nurse when we pass out.

Nursing is not only cleaning patients' backside, and clearing shit and urine. Nursing is about nursing a patient back to the state before he/she was admitted. Be honest, if I were to ask you to clear all these, will you do it? You will complain. But imagine, nurses have to clear what is not theirs. And some visitors even have the face to move far away from us when we are clearing your loved ones' shit and urine.

Nursing students have about 2 - 4 weeks of clinical attachments during each holiday. During my clinical attachments, I have seen how visitors and how patients treat the nurses. Some literally treat the nurses like slaves. But what can we and the nurses do? Nothing. We suck it all up as long as the patients recover well and discharge home after recovery. If patients have difficulties paying the bills or have emotional stress, we refer them for help.

And all every nurses wished for, is for people to treat us with a little respect.

More often than not, it is the dying that start to appreciate the things that the nurses do for them. Isn't it sad?

Nursing is a shitty job, I admit. Because nurses have to deal with the shitty attitude that people throw at us.