Naturally, Angels are ascribed to persons of exemplary conduct or virtue, conventionally represented in human forms in white robes. From time immemorial, Nurses have been described as angels in white. But like Lucifer, a good angel turned bad, we have looked in horror and terror at how a group of individuals clad in white uniforms have ravaged our country and the nursing profession precisely.
Many of us come across them often, but just a few have been able to decipher their numerous modus operandi derogatory to quality health care in Nigeria, pulling down the nursing profession along the way.
I shall expose them with this article on nursingworldnigeria: - they are the QUACKS in Nursing; I call them the ANGELS OF DEATH.
WHO IS A NURSE: According to Medical News Today (MNT), Nursing includes a range of specialties and definitions that vary from country to country. Broadly speaking, a nurse is a person who has formally been educated and trained in the care of the sick or disabled. In Nigeria, a nurse is an individual who has attended and completed ATLEAST the basic nursing education in a Nursing and Midwifery Council accredited institution, and had acquired the prerequisite knowledge in nursing and hence, is registered and licensed by Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria to practice anywhere around the world.
Nurses strive to achieve the best possible quality of life for their patients, regardless of disease or disability. They use clinical judgment to protect, promote, optimize health, prevent illness and injury, alleviate suffering and advocate in health care for individuals, families, communities, and populations.
A QUACK NURSE however, is a fake practitioner of nursing, someone who never acquired the needed knowledge and education to assist an individual sick or well in issues pertaining to health. It is pathetic how so many quacks have intruded the Nigerian Nursing Profession, tagging themselves 'auxiliary nurses' which the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria never had any provision for. Quackery of a truth is not peculiar to Nursing but Nursing has remained the only profession whose quacks have come out open to exhibit their criminal practices in broad day light, getting recognition and employments in known hospitals. They have become malignant and in a turf battle with nurses for wards and stations. It is a repulsive and regrettable situation that we find ourselves in.
Nursing has gone scientific and thus needs a scientific approach. It baffles me how some people who never completed their basic education or exceeded secondary education could be blindly trained and injected into the health sector to metastasize and destroy people's life as well as the nursing profession. The calamities these angels of death have brought to patients, nursing profession as a body and this nation at large cannot be over emphasized.
These quacks have given our dear patients the impression that nurses are those ladies in the ward that carry kidney dishes, wash hand basins and trays around the hospital, run errands for doctors. They have made the patients to see nurses as doctor's nurses instead of patient's nurses. The quacks lack the fundamental ethical code of conducts known of nurses, this is apparent and manifests in their dressing, attitudes and conducts in and outside the hospital settings. They are absolutely ignorant of the patient's bill of rights and as such violate every bit of it. Patients are handled as subjects rather than clients. Our respected patients are abused in diverse ways.
The ineptitudes of these angels of death complicate simple health issues and lead to unnatural death of patients which are always being covered up by the brains behind their actions. They neither know the scientific rationales nor the supposed outcome of the maltreatments they give. This is not surprising; definitely, they possess not the Prerequisite knowledge of nursing in any way. All they do is totally stick to the physician's command even when time and changes have developed errors in such commands. They lack the intuitive capabilities of a nurse to proffer life saving decision. As a result, even when the patient's condition might have changed and the previous order becomes detrimental to the patient, all you hear is "the doctor said..." A registered nurse is a reminder and good support to the physician in this regard. An error can hardly escape the physician and the eagle eyed registered nurse at the same time; it would be fished out and this is the essence of Team Working.
Quackery has dragged the face of Nursing in the mud. It has inflicted afflictions to nurses and traumatized the rapidity of the growth of this profession. It is pathetic how Nursing in Nigeria is lagging far much behind other health professions. These destructive angels have flooded the system and their presence has cost nurses their reputation, dignity and employment opportunities. Due to the bad image they paint, Nursing is regarded as a second class profession, an object of laughter and ridicule among her counterparts. The nursing blunders committed by these quacks are indiscriminately attributed to registered nurses across the nation. The unchangeable truth shall remain that these quacks are in no way related to nursing and its specialties.
On an international level, quacks have dented the image of Nigeria. Stories from Nurse Friends in Diaspora have always shown that Nigerian nurses are regarded as unprofessional on the job.. This is basically due to the embarrassments foreigners face in the hands of quacks during their visits to our lovely country. Most of them have the impression that Nigerian Nurses cannot carry out basic tasks accurately. Tell me why such conviction will not stand when quacks are so rampant that they can outnumber the registered nurses at a ratio of 1:10. They are the ones to be seen first at visiting our private clinics.
One may ask, why do individuals indulge in the criminality of invading such a noble profession through the back door? This could be attributed to their low intelligent quotient (IQ) which has robbed them of reality and lures them into believing that they would be certified at the end of the illegal training and possibly granted employments. It is clear that the kind of nuisance and menace quacks pose on patients and nursing cannot be equated to what it takes to acquire the correct nursing education in an accredited nursing institution. There is no short cut to any destination worth being. Nursing is never a place where those that lost educational bearing should run into for shield. Evidence has also proved that, while some people jumped into menial quack practices due to ignorance and poor educational foundation, others have joined to save face from the embarrassments and frustrations encountered in some nursing institutions. A situation where student nurses spend decades in the school without being indexed and registered for the final qualifying exam for causalities which is never their fault. These students jump into nearby clinics to save their faces from parents and friends who are looking up to them for excellence and thereafter, are polluted by their employers who use them as objects of ridicule to nursing profession.
Believably, there is no smoke without combustion. Who are those behind the training and employments of quacks? We need not any prophet to reveal this to us. Doctors who own several private clinics and illegal training homes around this country are the brains behind this. Chats with Some Doctor friends unveils the false claim that doctors train and employ quacks in order to cut down cost on the side of the patients as little or no money is needed to hire the quacks and so little charges are made to the patients. Any true Nigerian will attest to the fact that the private hospitals have never been considerate to the patients while compiling their gigantic bills. Sometimes the poor patient prefers dying at home to seeking medical attention in our private clinics because of the huge amount of money that in involved. The owners of some of these hospitals sacrifice patients’ lives on the altar of selfishness, profit making and greed.
Further findings show that quacks are not only trained for the above reasons but also to truncate the perceived growth of nursing profession. In as much as i wouldn’t want to group these quacks together with their trainers and employers in terms of their IQ, i would also not relent in bringing to their knowledge that the ornithological specimen of identical plumage congregates with the nearest proximity. I weep for my dear profession when I notice that some registered nurses indulge in the training of quacks either by will or compulsion. How then can we win this battle when we have taken arms against our own selves? It baffles me how we have chosen to be the thorns in our own skin!
What can we say when our leaders in the National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives (NANNM) keep chasing rats while their mansion is on fire. Since the government has chosen to handle the issue of quackery in nursing with a kid's glove, NANNM should wake up from her chronic slumber and take the bull by its horn. One does not need to become a law maker to know that anybody claiming to bear an identity which he does not truly possess should be charged for impersonation. The government made this provision so porous in nursing when they attached a fine of just N1000 to perpetrators of such an ambiguous and life threatening offence. I therefore charge our law makers to initiate suitable laws that will promptly check the menace of quackery in our society.
We have got all we need to fight for a quality health care. With the help of so many vibrant and radical young men and women in this profession today, change is inevitable. We shall quench the fire of quacks as we fan into flame the light of professionalism in this profession. Imagine a quack free Nursing Profession in Nigeria, what a blessed thought! When our patient will receive a qualitative care, free from unprofessional practices, when their confidence in nurses will be fully resuscitated and nurses shall appear and dazzle as angels of life of the nation and beloved friends of the sick.
It is then imperative that registered nurses should rise and set the pace, make a difference that would be so clear to even the blind. Let’s project the competence, scrupulousness and ethical codes of conducts in our practices. By so doing we shall separate and make it clear to the public that actually, there is a difference between the words; 'gone and gun'.
Let’s say NO to QUACKS, of a truth, LIFE has no DUPLICATE.
BY Nrs. Ihediwa Chris Emeka (ICE)
AND OFCOURSE YES I AM PROUD TO BE A NURSE..I SUPPORT THE FIGHT AGAINST QUACKERY!
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