Dear Editor,
What I’m about to say will undoubtedly upset many people in the medical profession, but it must be said. Nurses in the public health care facilities treat the people that they serve poorly and exhibit a disdain and complete and utter disregard for human life unrivalled by anything I have ever seen.
It was recently my tragic experience to be on the receiving end of this behaviour, as a consequence of which I lost someone very precious to me – my very first child, an innocent babe whose life could have been saved had it not been for the sick and disgusting attitude of one nurse whom I encountered in the labour room of the Georgetown Public Hospital.
After visiting the hospital during midday hours late last week [week beginning October 17] with severe back pain and being admitted to the prenatal ward I was eventually rudely “sent,” yes “sent,” by the nurse in that ward to the labour room at about 6.30 am after she had been out during the night and had left several pregnant women in the ward by themselves in severe pain with absolutely no supervision.
There I was abruptly told to get on the bed and get undressed, then left to lie there in intense pain until a few minutes to 7 am. I was then attended to by a nurse, whose name I will not call at this present time. She examined me and apparently reached the conclusion that I was ready and able to have a natural birth and proceeded to clip my water bag which had not burst. Upon doing this I noticed an unusual substance in the receptacle that collected the fluids, which I later realised was meconium, which is a thick dark green mucoid material that is the first faeces of a newborn child.
The nurse then instructed me to “hurry up and push the child out because she was getting off at 7 and that I should be grateful that she’s there helping me and not another nurse who won’t be as nice.” Trying in vain to comply and because of the severe back pain I was experiencing, albeit no contractions, I was still unable to deliver my baby.
I was then cruelly told that I had better “push de chile out before it dead.” At that point I panicked and redoubled my efforts to safely deliver my baby. The nurse apparently decided I was making a fool of her so she took off her gloves and left me on the delivery bed straining to birth my child safely while she got herself prepared to leave, while gaffing with her colleagues. I lay there trying my best while I was callously ignored by the labour room nurses for several minutes until another one came and gave me an injection to induce the contractions. After a few minutes and they realised that not even this would allow the child to be born they left me to my own devices while they got themselves busy to come off their shift.
One nurse, who I would like to think remembers something of why she initially choose to enter the profession, came on duty with the 7 am shift and enquired why was there a pregnant woman lying on a bed at the back of the room all alone in labour and no one was attending to her.
She examined me and sent for a doctor immediately. Two doctors came to the room and determined that my cervix had not dilated enough for a child to pass through, that, added to the evidence of meconium in the amniotic fluid, which he said was very thick, should have alerted the attending nurses that a doctor’s attention was needed.
I was eventually prepared for an emergency caesarean section while convulsing in pain brought on by the injection that I was given to induce contractions, and then rushed by ambulance to the operating theatre still writhing in pain and having to restrain myself from pushing the child out as per the instructions of the nurse that accompanied me in the ambulance. There in the theatre I had another wait to endure for the physician to arrive from wherever it was that he was to perform the operation.
It is only by the grace of God that I survived that ordeal, but the same cannot be said for my baby, who had developed lung problems due to the fact that he aspirated too much of the fluids. He had to be revived twice during the course of the day in the neonatal unit but he eventually didn’t respond to attempts to revive him the third time and subsequently died that evening.
All this time I was in the post-natal unit for caesarean mothers recovering and thanking God that myself and my baby pulled through our ordeal alive and well, completely ignorant of the fact that my son’s vital signs were so low as to be non-existent. I was told the following morning at about 9 am that my baby had died the previous evening at around 9 pm.
Nothing at all can compensate me for the loss and pain that I suffered at the hands of the staff at the GPH, but I ‘pen’ this letter in the hope that something will be done about the attitude of the nursing personnel in the public health care facilities.
Someone needs to be made a very strong example of before we can see attitudinal changes in the health sector. The nurses are callous and uncaring of the lives that are placed in their hands and have absolutely no right in the profession and should be gotten rid of forthwith.
There is no proper system in this country to oversee this kind of unprofessionalism in the health sector, and until then my child will be just another statistic in the maternal and infant deaths that stalk this land.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address
provided.)
Editor’s note
We sent a copy of this letter to Ms Alero Proctor, Public Relations Officer of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation and received the following response:
“This letter serves to acknowledge the receipt of your letter dated October 26, 2010, for which I thank you.
“I first would like to inform you that the Public Relations Office is aware of the letter and its content as from all indications it is the very letter which was published in the Wednesday, October 27, 2010 edition of the Kaieteur News.
“Management has already launched an investigation into the matter and a statement will be released shortly.”
Yours faithfully,
Alero Proctor
Public Relations Officer