Stop violence against nurses

Stop violence against nurses
By Editor
Saturday September 15, 2007 [04:00]

Our nurses need support and not beatings. No crime committed against nurses in the name of seeking a better service from them or in frustration against their not providing the service expected of them can be justified in any way. It is surprising that our member of parliament for Roan Constituency, Chishimba Kambwili, can justify and defend the beatings of nurses. As a lawmaker, Kambwili should know that assaulting a nurse on duty is a crime under Section 250 (e) of the Penal Code. It is shocking that a lawmaker can advocate such a criminal practice.

What our nurses need is not beatings but support. Our nurses have tough obstacles. They face many empty storerooms, overwhelming numbers of patients and low wages. And as if it were not enough, Kambwili wants us to add violence against nurses to all this. For all their deficiencies, our nurses - given the tough conditions under which they operate - deserve our understanding, sympathy and support.

They are making extraordinary contribution to our health system. They care for our children, treat our sick and heal us if we are wounded. It is true we are not getting the service that we desire and deserve from our nurses and other health workers. But is it really their fault that things have turned out this way?

There are not enough nurses in Zambia and this causes a lot of problems in the work of those few who have to attend to patients and work long hours. There is need to improve the conditions under which our nurses work if we want to get a better service from them. What they need now is support and funding. We need to find better ways to train and retrain.

To get the best out of our nurses, we must improve the conditions under which they operate and make their work easier. To do this, we need to spend more of our budget as a country on health.

Working conditions are important in motivating our nurses to perform their tasks. And satisfactory working conditions comprise a clean and safe environment, innovative management, availability of medical equipment and supplies. Besides, it is essential that our nurses are not overwhelmed with work. They need to work reasonable hours and take vacations regularly when required. Our nurses are demotivated by so many things, which include the run-down working conditions and heavy workloads.

We should increase wages for nurses in order for them to meet the basic rights of adequate food, shelter, clothing and communication. This is what is going to improve the performance of our nurses, and not the beatings we want to subject them to.

Improving conditions for nurses is not a favour to them; it is a service to the Zambian people who depend on the services offered by nurses. Every person in this country has a right to receive healthcare. We have a duty as a nation to take care of our people who are sick.

In saying all this, we are not in any way defending bad behaviour or practice from our nurses. What we are trying to do is merely recognise the fact that our nurses are not necessarily bad or insensitive people.

They are merely overwhelmed and overburdened by the conditions under which they have to perform their duties to the Zambian people. Nurses should treat patients with respect and compassion. Caring for the sick is a calling of a special dignity and importance, not just another job.

We may not be able to miraculously cure our sick sisters and brothers around us, but we can share the charity of tender hands and promote the justice of good health policies and adequate facilities and medicines.

There is no future development without healthy citizens. We cannot claim to uphold the sanctity of life if there is no provision for minimal healthcare for all. Let us try to reach out, in compassion and solidarity, to all sick members of our community.
We have a problem with the way our health system is operating.

But this should not drive us to behave in a brutish way towards our nurses. This is not the way to address such a complex phenomenon. There is need for level-headedness and rationality in the way we respond to the deficiencies in the services being provided by our nurses and indeed other health workers.

We urge our politicians to avoid the type of irrationality, thoughtlessness and lawlessness exhibited by Kambwili. This is not the way political leaders should behave. Violence against nurses and other health workers will not cure the ills that today characterise our health system.

We don't know how many nurses we will need to beat to get things right, to get things working in an efficient, effective and orderly manner. It's only people who can't reason who will resort to the type of violence against nurses being justified by Kambwili. Let us stop the violence against nurses.