richyfunky:
Nigerian Nurses & Doctors can be cruel & heartless, when a case is life threatening, you do everything to save that life cos that's shud be ur No.1 priority instead of giving excuses. LIFE NO GET DUPLICATE

chrisbaba1:
If a man or woman is about to die, you are meant to do something not caring about the money, at least revive the patient to a point. I think staring at a patient who is half dead and doing nothing when you have the ability to do something is very heartless.

josite:
I stopped reading your story where u said he was in distress but Hus condition doesn't seems life threatening. so the fact that he is in distress is not good enough to warrant immediate attention. your case is lost.you are one of them nurses.

mentorandfriend:
Yes. Lack of equipped facilities; but lets talk about the ignorance of our general populace.

In the teaching hospital where I trained, on the day of passing out parade, some coppers went out to drink, and one thing led to the other so one drunk copper dived into the swimming pool and drowned there. I guess he could not maneuvre the waters because of his drunken state.

These coppers, numbering about a hundred carried a clinically dead person to our centre, demanding that we raise him back to life.

The issue of money, bed space, etc came up, and before you could pronounce a word, they have beat up two nurses at A&E, slapped a doctor into unconsciousness, and more.

Ignorance is deeply rooted in Nigerian culture.

In the private clinic I work, I play safe o. My head first. I forsee foolishness and hide.

When people waste time to arrive to a health centre, they turn around and blame health workers for being lazy, unconcerned and uncaring.

omogin:

Revive with what? Lol... You think its with bare hands people are revived. Or you think all drugs should be free. If there's no food in your house and someone comes hungry and asking for food at midnight, what would you do? Take your blame to the policy makers and those who should finance the system. Healthcare is better abroad, why? Is it because the health workers are more competent and dedicated? Not necessarily. Effective working systems are put in place to make the work possible

stereo:


How did you talk to them when they arrived seeing their anxiety and worry? Look, you guys have to be trained in managing emergencies in the way to talk to your patients and their relatives.

Your profession needs people who can show compassion in the face of distress.
It is a profession for people who genuinely care about others.

I know the Nigerian government is filled with uncompassionate people but our health workers must stand out.
There are many things I want to say.

My main point here is even if you're without COMPASSION, learn to show it.

sobal:
true talk dose hospital dat does nt hav adequate. Equipment and staff shld be closed

mebad:
@op how do you explain the insensitive manner and bashful manner nurses talk and treat their patients? especially does at state own hospitals. they treat you like you are not human and obviously don't care. a patient is in pains and these nurses look/treat you like "shey na we send you message, if you wan die, you better die"

horlus:
I appreciate your write up but in some cases it's also negligence and carelessness from doctors. I lost my son few weeks ago after being born 4days later to jaundice. Despite the fact my wife kept alerting them that she has an history with jaundice from the theater where she had a casseran procedure. It's a story I don't want to start writing about right now but the child should not be dead if not for carelessness from the hospital doctors. Everyone keeps telling me to sue the hospital I v just decided to let go.

Jackeeh:
Just 2 nurses on duty,covering both Labor and emergency wards? For real?

helpee:
so sorry for your loss but that doesnt mean the hospital is to blame. look, the mere fact they knew your baby had jaundice doesnt mean they must be able to save your baby unless you tell us what they were supposed to do that they didnt do. it may interest you to know that we dont have any level 3 NICU in nigeria where we can take care of extremely sick babies. no faacilities for ECMO, HFOV etc. so even if your baby is seriously sick and i know your baby needs any of these, i cant help cos we dont have such facilities. moreso, jaundice from what? is your wife O NEGATIVE? was the jauncice physiological or was it as a result of infection or even congenital problem ? i am not standing in for them but the mere fact they knew your baby had jaundice does not mean they must be able to save your baby. people still die even in the best setting despite advanced medical procedures. my intention is to set up a level 3 NICU in nigeria with facilties for ECMO but even in such centres the minimum deposit will still be like 500,000 naira only. i need close to 500milliion to set it up and to maintain is very expensive. i am presently studying neonatal medicine at cardiff and my total school fees when i finish this post graduate program will be about 15million in 2yrs. so, it will still be impossible for me to help the very sick children of poor people even after setting it up so if you bring your sick baby in emergency without deposit i wont admit you and that doesnt mean i am wicked.

zed7:
If you guys have no doctors or inadequate personnel then please close the hospital.
It's not an excuse you are giving. The duty of every medical personnel is to save life. Imagine how silly you are to say what you have said and called it a defence.
Haven't you met doctors who try to save accident victims even when they do not have their kits with them? They use whatever is available and make an attempt. No matter the situation, the medical personnel should make an attempt to help, reassure the patient and kindly refer them somewhere else.
This is not usually the case as our Nigerian nurses and doctors are arrogant and treat you like thrash.
Like the Nigerian society, you are only treated with respect if you have money.
Mr/Madam nurse, you excuse or defense is lame. The family of the man should have lynched you also. You people's attitude and not lack of facilities caused the man's death.

helpee:
so sorry for your loss but that doesnt mean the hospital is to blame. look, the mere fact they knew your baby had jaundice doesnt mean they must be able to save your baby unless you tell us what they were supposed to do that they didnt do. it may interest you to know that we dont have any level 3 NICU in nigeria where we can take care of extremely sick babies. no faacilities for ECMO, HFOV etc. so even if your baby is seriously sick and i know your baby needs any of these, i cant help cos we dont have such facilities. moreso, jaundice from what? is your wife O NEGATIVE? was the jauncice physiological or was it as a result of infection or even congenital problem ? i am not standing in for them but the mere fact they knew your baby had jaundice does not mean they must be able to save your baby. people still die even in the best setting despite advanced medical procedures. my intention is to set up a level 3 NICU in nigeria with facilties for ECMO but even in such centres the minimum deposit will still be like 500,000 naira only. i need close to 500milliion to set it up and to maintain is very expensive. i am presently studying neonatal medicine at cardiff and my total school fees when i finish this post graduate program will be about 15million in 2yrs. so, it will still be impossible for me to help the very sick children of poor people even after setting it up so if you bring your sick baby in emergency without deposit i wont admit you and that doesnt mean i am wicked.

delishpot:
Then they should close those akara hospitals. No equipment, no doctor on call, no nurses on duty, No ambulance, No driver on seat, no gen, No keys to pharmacy, No pharmacist on seat, no nothing all they have is the buildings and a staff to give the list of things they dont have when a patient comes in.
Those Akara hospitals should not be allowed to addmit patients or run maternity/Emergency wards and they should be told to close at 5 or 6 pm everyday so every one knows they are not available for work. They should just be clinics to treat cough and cartarh and n9thing more.
If a so called hospital cannot respond to patients and give some form of care while they arrange for the transfer of the patient to a bigger hospital then they should not be allowed to run as a full blown hospital.
Shame on Nigerian government through the years. They should put laws in place that will regulate hospitals
They should be categorized and given licence and operational time based on equipments, number of staff and qualification or experience on doctors and nurses on duty. Enough of the bloodshed. I dey vex o. My blood dey boil.
BTW when will govt step ip health insurance for Nigerians?

free2blast:
I wonder if "HOSPITAL POLICY" would also apply if it were a family member of the nurse that needs emmergency attention? The fact remains that most nurses are mean and lazy.

otokx:


You cannot show compassion when not adequately eqquiped or motivated. That time using to lecture the people on the why it is no going to be possible will be best used attending to a patient already on admission.

josite:
I stopped reading your story where u said he was in distress but Hus condition doesn't seems life threatening. so the fact that he is in distress is not good enough to warrant immediate attention. your case is lost.you are one of them nurses.

claremont:
It's pointless having hospitals that are poorly equipped and poorly staffed. The majority of the preventable deaths that happen in hospitals in Nigeria are mainly due to negligence. It's a sad reflection on the country as a whole that medical personnel have lost a sense of empathy, in so much that they would rather a patient died than make personal sacrifices.

dicefrost:
I have read quite a handful of stories about unfortunate and preventable deaths in our hospitals, both private and public. Some have touched me personally, especially when it involves a pregnant woman, or a young promising life like the uniport student. For anyone who has been a victim, no amount consolation would be enough to pacify the pain of losing a loved one. As a nurse, i have seen this scenario play out time and again, to the point that i have grown thick skin, but i still feel deeply for anyone who has lost a loved one in death. Death is usually more painful when it could have been avoid. But in Nigerian hospitals, avoidable deaths tend to be more common. Believe me, only a few actually come to public knowledge. And when it does, one set of healthcare professionals are often at the receiving end of the vituperation and opprobrium it generates ; The NURSES!. They are the easiest to vilify, and push around. Often times, we only hear one side of these stories, that is the deseased's side, or in rare cases we hear the side of the hospital management. This article is not meant to exonerate nurses from all blame, (sometimes they are directly responsible) it is meant to tell one of such stories from the nurse's angle.

If we look at these stories carefully with an open mind you would discover one major problem in our hospitals, and that is lack of equipments. Like in the case of the upth student, the problem was lack of bed space. We only heard the story from one side, and we vilified the nurses and doctors, and berated them for not finding an alternative. Well i wasn't at upth, so i have no idea what really happened. But i have lost a patient in similar fashion before, and i was almost beaten up by the patient's relatives, so i can relate. In my own case, we were only two nurses on duty, myself and another nurse who was pregnant at the time. We were covering the emergency and labour ward together.

The patient in question arrived with his family members, he was in obvious distress, but his condition did not seem life threatening at the time. Myself and my colleague were both in the labour room, trying to deliver a baby with breech presentation, an extremely risky procedure. When i heard their shout for attention, i left my colleague alone to handle the delivery (which was risky) in order to attend to the new patient. There was no bed space, so i simply spread a blanket on the ground for him to lie on. The family members protested, but i had neither the time nor the patience to explain and negotiate with them. I explained our admission procedure to them, told them to pay for a card, and purchase the A&E kit. Once again, they protested that they had no money. I explained to them that given the fact that he had been vomiting and stooling, he would need i.v infusion immediately. I put a call across to the doctor on call, who was equally busy, and headed back to the labour room.

After about 30 minutes, the doctor arrived. The family had not purchased the A&E kit, neither had they paid for a card. So he referred them to a teaching hospital and left for the theater. They called me out a few minutes later, this time one of them had an i.v infusion with him, which he had gone to buy from a local chemist that night. They begged me to give him the infusion. I explained to them that the hospital policy does not permit me to insert a canula into a patient's vein, hence they have to wait for the doctor. I left them again, and called the doctor to inform him. The doctor came back, and insisted that they should go to the teaching hospital.

About thirty minutes later, i heard a loud shout, and rushed out to see what was happening. Behold, our patient was unconscious, and almost not breathing. I advised the family to quickly take him to the teaching hospital, because we do not have equipments to resuscitate him. They requested for an ambulance and someone to accompany them. There was a problem, we only had one ambulance driver, and he doesn't work night shifts, and more so we had no personnel to spare for the trip. All hell broke loose, the family members began to shout and make threats. I had to hide my head. I left them and went back to the labour room. I did not hear from them again that night, until the morning after when hoodlums invaded the hospital, bearing matchets and sticks. I scaled the hospital fence and got away. The doctor and the morning nurses weren't so fortunate, they vandalised cars and beat them up.

The boy died, but the story that was circulated was that " because they had no money, the wicked nurse refused to attend to them, and left them to go and sleep elsewhere. When they even bought drip from a chemist, the wicked nurse refused to give their son the drip, insisting that they must buy from the hospital." No one considered the fact that the overworked nurse was busy handling another delicate situation, and could not focus attention on a patient who has not been admitted. Now you must be wondering, since it was an emergency, why did we not just attend to the patient and worry about the money later? My answer; HOSPITAL POLICY. If i admit the patient, and use the hospital's consumables without the patient paying for it, the bill would be subtracted from my salary, after i am issued a query. If the bills of 3 or 4 patients are subtracted from my salary, how much would be left?. The best i could do was to refer them to the teaching hospital, where they ll receiving free emergency treatment for 24 hours before payment.

Now, let us examine the most recent case. When the man arrived with his wife, the nurses told him straight away to go to igando general hospital, because there was no doctor. But he refused, insisting that the hospital was too big not to have a doctor on call. But it is very possible that the hospital may have only one doctor, who cannot work for 24 hours. I have seen such scenarios alot. There are unreasonable restrictions placed on nurses in nigeria today, our scope of practice is unjustly limited. Hence, when a nurse refuses to touch a patient, she is probably afraid of crossing a line and indicting herself. So when there is no doctor, and the hospital policy prevents the nurse from doing what he/she knows, what do you expect the nurse to do?. That was probably why the nurses insisted that he take his wife to igando. But the man stubbornly carried his wife into the hospital himself. When he insisted, the nurses probably out of pity cautiously did the little they could do without crossing a line, which was obviously inadequate.

When he agreed to go, the nurses did not have the key to the ambulance, maybe the ambulance driver was not on duty! Again, the nurses did not want to accompany him, probably because they were already understaffed and overbooked, and had no one to spare. Do we know how many nurses where on duty? What about the doctor who arrived late? It is also possible that he is the only doctor in the hospital, and works 8 to 4pm like everyone else. If he leaves his house at all that night, he is only doing you a favour, he is not paid to work at that time. It sounds cruel, but that is the truth.

When he got to igando, there was no bed space! Are the health workers to blame for that? Peharps, while he waited for what seemed like an eternity, the nurses were frantically making efforts to secure a bed space for the patient. And then the money issue came, which i have already dealt with.

I can assure you of one small truth. The issue will be swept under the carpet, because if it is investigated constructively, the blame will fall largely on the government. Our health sector is in shambles, it needs massive investment, in terms of man power and infrastructure. Until this happen, we cannot continue to heap all the blame on our hardworking doctors and nurses. They are just like the soldiers sent to confront boko haram without weapons. They deserve our sympathy, not insults. When next a nurse in a public hospital seem not to perform to your expectation, it may be because her hands are tied!




Lalasticlala, dominique, give us a chance to defend ourselves

josite:
I stopped reading your story where u said he was in distress but Hus condition doesn't seems life threatening. so the fact that he is in distress is not good enough to warrant immediate attention. your case is lost.you are one of them nurses.

Orikinla:
. Thank you. Why should any clinic or hospital without required equipment be allowed to operate? These horrible and terrible things happen, because of a corrupt and incompetent government where incompetent intellectual re-tarded politicians are appointed as Ministers and DGs. The Nigerian Medical Council should close any clinic or hospital without required medical equipment, so that they will not deceive ignorant people to mistake them for real clinics and hospitals. The Nigerian Medical Council or Association is to blame for these clinics and hospitals operating without equipment in Nigeria, because they are owned or run by their members.

Chinwem:



It's not so much about the facilities but the appalling attitude of staff and extreme lack of empathy to patients
We are talking jaundice and you re mentioning ECMO ??!? Even in the UK how many ECMO centers are there?
Simple things like taking a good history , keep baby under blue light/phototherapy , blood exchange
As for the bolded, jaundice from what .......that's for the doctors and nurses to find out and tell us.
You can study to the highest level and provide all the multi million equipment
But if your attitude stinks from a mile away......you re in the wrong vocation.
Medicine is not about bragging rights..... It's about human life

josite:
I stopped reading your story where u said he was in distress but Hus condition doesn't seems life threatening. so the fact that he is in distress is not good enough to warrant immediate attention. your case is lost.you are one of them nurses.

LadyFiona:
You called exchange blood transfusion simple thing and photo therapy even.?? In Nigeria, the attitude of the health workers is directly proportional to the environment the person grew up in, trained, work and also the equipment and renumeration/incentives accrued from the job.

The person you quoted isn't bragging but stating a fact.

richyfunky:
Nigerian Nurses & Doctors can be cruel & heartless, when a case is life threatening, you do everything to save that life cos that's shud be ur No.1 priority instead of giving excuses. LIFE NO GET DUPLICATE

stag:
Op, I would have loved to agree with you in all of this except one thing:

Why do hospitals have 24hrs standby ambulances but have only 8am-4pm drivers. Emergencies do not occur at night?
A friend's father died in an hospital at about 1pm on a sunday and they needed ambulance to take the body to a morgue, the hospital said without thought nor remorse:
"Our driver does not work on Sundays"!

How ridiculous! Emergencies do not occur on Sundays?

All these hospitals should just open at 8am and lock up at 4pm, Monday-Friday.