As a child, Vidya Ketwaroo was a regular visitor to the hospital because of illness and it was there she fell in love with the nurse’s uniform and knew one day it would be hers to wear. It became a reality later and while walking the hospital wards was fulfilling for her, the real satisfaction came when she became a public health nurse and had direct interaction with the community.
A few months ago, she officially retired after spending some 37 years in the profession and as she reflected on those years during a recent interview, Ketwaroo said the years she spent at the Industry, Kitty and Campbellville and health centres impacted her the most. At one time she was also rotated to health centres on the East Bank.
“Because when you in the community you reach out… You work with the less fortunate to the rich and powerful people. So, when you are in that community you are able to bridge the gap, you get to know the key personnel within the community where you work…” Ketwaroo explained.
She spoke about reaching out to the business community to assist with the needs of those she came into contact with and this added a new dimension to her service. She described this as the “best part” of her job: giving back to the people. She shared that at Industry she had a clothing box which became filled quickly because of the residents’ support and they would then make little parcels and give to those in need.
Ketwaroo recalled that working at the hospital meant that the routine was the same every day but at the health centres “every single day was exciting for me because it takes you to doing different things. Every day was a different clinic schedule”. Schedules could also include visiting schools to conduct health education sessions and home visits to patients who could not visit the health centre and it was not just their medical needs she attended to, but also their social needs, as much as possible.
While she has not yet fully hung up that nursing uniform, as she was rehired following her March 13 retirement and is still attached to the Georgetown Public Hospital’s COVID-19 vaccination centre, she related that she has had a career that meant everything to her and given the opportunity she would do nothing different.
She described nursing as a “caring and noble profession” but called for it return to “where it was. It is heart breaking to see nursing is not where it should be…” She bemoaned the shoddy conduct of some nurses who do not see getting to work on time as an important aspect of their employment. She believes being on the ward 15 minutes before one’s shift begins is important, but not everyone feels the same and for her that’s a “step back”.
On the other hand, she admitted that nurses are no longer motivated because of the working conditions even though there are many more opportunities now available compared with when she joined the profession. She called for daycare facilities to be accessible to nurses close to their workplace and recalled that this was available at GPH many years ago.
“It is not nice seeing a nurse struggling with her bag, a baby and a baby bag trying to get the baby off to daycare and get to work on time. That can be very difficult,” she said.
And she also called for senior nurses to be given duty-free allowances as she pointed out this is available to doctors soon after they become qualified even though they had not yet given years of service to the country. On the other hand, nurses who have given years of services are not afforded the same opportunity.
She also decried the salary paid to nurses as she noted that even though they might have job satisfaction, this cannot be taken to the supermarket. But even so, she believes nurses should perform their duties professionally and give of their best since they chose to become nurses.
Motivation
“As a child I used to visit the hospital often because while growing up I always seemed to have an issue to be seen by a doctor… the nurses’ uniform, the white uniform and the cap sitting on their head and the way they went through taking care of people, that motivated me. So, from a very tender age I knew that I would become a nurse when the time was right,” she told Stabroek Weekend.
At school whenever she was asked about her career choice, it was always nursing because, “I wanted to care for people,” she recalled.
Following her year of national service, which she served at GPH, Ketwaroo said, she got on the nursing assistant programme in 1984. She did two years of that training attired in a yellow uniform; during those years they were referred to as the “yellow frock” nurses.
“In those years working at Georgetown Hospital, even though you were a nursing assistant, you had so many senior nurses that you could have learnt from and so you were taught to do so many different procedures,” she shared.
Ketwaroo said she learnt that as a nurse one must operate as a sponge and soak up all information provided and “that’s what I did”.
However, she found that there was not a lot of scope and one had to wait a few years before being allowed to do another programme. It was not until 1997 that she completed her professional nursing studies and became a registered nurse. At that time, a nurse spent one year in every department at the GPH and on completion was “rounded as a nurse,” she recalled.
In 2007 she became a midwife and was appointed staff nurse-midwife.
“I really enjoyed midwifery especially assisting the mothers in delivering their beautiful little babies,” she said.
But being eager and hungry for more, Ketwaroo said, in 2011, she embarked on the public health programme to become a health visitor or public health nurse.
“Then I realised that being a nurse is completed after you finish that public health programme because you are not only hospital based as you are not only dealing with a patient but you are dealing with a patient, a family, a community as a whole and that is important,” she said.
‘Mixed feelings’
Ketwaroo said that as she approached March 13, 2022 when she attained the age of retirement – 55 – she was enveloped in what she described as “mixed feelings”. She explained that she was sad in the sense that she realised her term as a nurse was ending and the fact that she had spent more than half of her life doing what she loved.
“There is a fulfillment in what I did because I know what… I set out to do I have accomplished it but at the same time it was a mixed feeling [because] I would no longer be a part of it,” she said.
Given the opportunity to remain as a staff at GPH was one she was grateful for, she said, since she can continue to do “what I love best”.
Reflecting on her years as a nurse, Ketwaroo said she has had many experiences that have remained with her. She gave the example of an elderly man who had his eye surgery postponed on several occasions because of elevated blood pressure. One morning he travelled all the way from Linden to visit the ophthalmology department at GPH and even though it was a day for child patients, she decided to see him.
“And that morning when I did that man’s blood pressure it was normal and so I prepared that patient for surgery, take him to the operating room with me because at that time I was in charge of our operating room… and then I called doctor,” she recalled.
That doctor was former minister of health Dr George Norton, who, Ketwaroo said, believed in his nurses, and he arrived, examined the patient and performed the surgery, removing the cataract from one of the man’s eyes.
“In less than 15 minutes his surgery was over, and he went home with his daughter. The following day when he returned I was there again and on removing the bandage from his eye, he said to me, ‘Nurse your voice, the way you speak to me is everything I can see when you remove this eye patch’,” she recalled.
The patient held her hands and told her he asked God to bless her with patience and the right attitude for the work she was doing. That was a fulfilling experience that has remained with her over the years.
“It is like winning a lotto when an elderly man can bless you like that…,” she said still somewhat emotional.
Another impacting experience was also at the eye clinic when a blind woman was taken there by her daughter who was very brusque with her, so much so that Ketwaroo and another nurse asked her to leave and let them handle the woman as she was actually using indecent language to her mother.
But as they prepared her for surgery they found that her blood sugar was high and as such the surgery could not be done and upon being told this her daughter became abusive again, telling her mother that she had lied about her diabetic condition.
Ketwaroo said she and her colleague took the woman to the medical clinic and got a doctor to see her and control her sugar for one week at the end of which the ophthalmologist was satisfied and decided to perform surgeries on both of the woman’s eyes.
“The next morning when we took off those eye patches from her she said, ‘Nurse I could see as clear as day’. How could you not feel blessed assisting someone to gain their vision again? These are little blessings I would take with me for the rest of my life…,” Ketwaroo said.
It is because of those experiences and many more that Ketwaroo said if she were to be given the opportunity she would choose nursing all over again as she pointed out the overwhelming days helped her to cope with difficult circumstances.
Explaining the importance of a nurse to a nation, Ketwaroo pointed out that most times they are the first people a baby sees, and they are also there to close to the eyes of a dead person. She also pointed out that often when doctors and consultants speak to patients it is the nurse who has to break it down after they leave so that the patient could understand.
“Nursing is where you can have self-satisfaction…reaching out to people for them to feel comfortable and for them to say ‘thank you nurse I respect the fact that you have taken an extra mile in getting me here’ there is no money in the world can pay you for them,” the mother of one shared.
