Daily Times

Nursing is an art that only certain gracious people are provided with!

In Kashmir, rumours are generally truer than facts. Mystically, nursing galloped with such rumours; potentially incorporated with viral traits.

After a long hitherto, the deeply embedded virtual disgrace has progressively disappeared. A sighing nurse, even her verbal prudence, was enough to splash an apathetic smile on the faces. The psychological imbroglio of the common masses was satirically bereft of such a profession.

Here, I want to take a few moments as you encounter a nurse. An informal fantasy is induced in you; a sense of downtrodden; many impregnated false notations; you might have experienced all such things.

Five years have passed since Govt College of Nursing (GMC), SRINAGAR was initiated.

Till now, there isn’t any separate department or building so the concurrent batches are lodged in AMT School at Shireen Bagh Campus.

Then, only a Bsc (Nursing) course was approved and initiated under the realms of GMC SRINAGAR. Just like other students, I, too, thought that we might have a separate department inside GMC or there might be a seperate building for Bsc (Nursing).

But, it turned out to be something different.

It was my first day in college and there wasn’t any orientation.

I felt like I was attending a lecture at a private tuition centre. Sometimes I wonder whether I should call it a college because it did not have any characteristic of a college. Isn’t this sense of uncertainty that I felt as a college student mere humiliation?

During the initial days of my college, I thought that we would meet the principal who would greet us and guide us towards a better future. We at least deserved these few cherished minutes from our principal if not monthly or even yearly meetings.

But unfortunately, nothing of the sort happened.

I have yet to hear from my principal.

It has taken me four years to finally reach my third year because of delays, inefficient administration, fragile approach and severe negligence.

Now I ask, who should I hold accountable for this delay? According to Indian Nursing Council protocols and legal requirements, the degree should be finished in four years, but here, the length is stretching day by day.

Here, our precious time is getting wasted.

Recently, one of my companions, stationed at a clinical practice in the super speciality hospital, revealed a surprising and shocking incident in which the buttons of his shirt were torn apart by an employee just because the employees considered to be authoritarian of the entire intensive care ward. In one another incident, a technician was reported to continuously harass nursing students on the pretext of abysmal things.

When the students reported the same incident to their faculty, they seemed helpless.

They couldn’t report the incident and there wasn’t any disciplinary action against the contender.

Recently, a group of nursing students was denied permission in neuro-lab for three consecutive days.

A few days ago, I was posted in ENT OT, here in SMHS Hospital along with two other companions. Right from its inception to the time we left, I felt that we were in a strange world where I couldn’t find any belongings. I have read in books about scrubs and circulatory nurses, but I found that such doesn’t exist in reality. There are no such nurses in GMC Srinagar.

In GMC SRINAGAR, you won’t find any scrubs and circulatory nurse.

The incharge was looking at us with suspicious eyes thinking that we don’t have any job here.

He said, “You shouldn’t come here, you don’t have any part to play here in OT.”

In April, I was on a clinical posting at GB Pant hospital, when a doctor dropped the aspired fluid in the wrong tube while conducting a bone marrow aspiration. As the attendant came to know about this, she began cursing the nurse posted there.

She used absurd and abusive language to address the same nurse.

A nurse has become a soft target for humiliations.

Ranging from inside the department to the society outside, a nurse is humiliated within every inch of Kashmir.

During the initial days of my college, I thought that we would meet the principal who would greet us and guide us towards a better future. We at least deserved these few cherished minutes from our principal if not monthly or even yearly meetings

I was attending a pharmacology class in GMC Srinagar, as the professor who was about to deliver a lecture shockingly said, “What is this Bsc Nursing about?”

In December 2017, the BSc nursing students from the College of Nursing GMC expressed their outrage over delay in the issuance of results, while protesting at Pratap Park. The students said to media personnel that despite six months, their results were not yet declared and there was an absolute loss of connection between the administrative unit of the said college and the administrative officials at Kashmir University, where the course was registered.

When the students approached the university officials, they said that their external practical award sheet was missing. They conveyed the same message to the administrative unit of the respective nursing college. This aroused utter confusion in the minds of students, which eventually provoked them to stage a protest. The untraced practical award sheet continues as a mystery, and how they furnished the certificates to the students is utter chaos till now.

On July 10, I was learning my objectives at the post-operative ward in the super speciality hospital and was accompanied by two companions, both female. We were collecting history from the patient’s report card when suddenly an apparent employee appeared. He was a young adult. He began asking questions and asked my companions to come to his office so that he could make them understand things and started asking for their phone numbers. This, they denied.

He obsessively started asking them to register his phone number.

He was looking at them with eyes full of lust.

Even during my posting at GB Pant Hospital, when we used to have lunch at the canteen, the waiters serving food resorted to eve-teasing and frisking our female counterparts. Recently, I saw a doctor inadvertently pat and touch a nurse while talking to her; giggling and splashing a naughty smile.

Over the years, I have witnessed the pyschological trauma. It feels that I am marred and chopped.

They claim nursing to be a noble profession, but I object!

Because, here in Kashmir, it has been concocted with disgrace and humiliation.

It tends to care but takes back nothing else but a disgrace.

In Kashmir, a nurse does not exist anywhere in the medical circle, from admission to discharge. She does not have any role to play. She has been restricted to administer medications. I am fatigued because I keep standing through the day because I am not assigned any work. I am provided with a huge syllabus, which is not utilised.

We are often rebuked by higher officials as they say that they don’t need us.

Females involved in this profession have always been a victim of social stigma. There exists a pseudo-imagery of female nurses, especially when looked through the lens of the society in Kashmir. The people exude that females nurses have a lucid character.

They are devoid of moral and ethics.

Many relationships die on the way because the parents don’t agree upon their profession, because of their narrowed consciousness.

During the second world war, when the mega-armoured persons, children and elders were in a miserable state, these so-called lucid nurses endeavoured to serve mankind with patience and expertise. Quite invariably, they strived to serve while you left no chance to humiliate them.

In any hospital setting, when everyone seemingly appears strange, you hardly dare express your grievances, only the nurse seems to be an option. Have you ever analysed this? Certainly not, because your ingrains are preoccupied with false notations.

Depression continues to be the prime concern in Kashmir; invariably paralysing the masses with its dark appearance and least options to resolve it. The nurses can do it.

Being primary caregivers, nurses can induce a major jolt to this long impending horror due to their awareness of social, cultural, political, occupational tendencies.

So, we, as nurses, strive to stop their tears, to energize them, to comfort them, to feel their selves.

Sometimes, we are alienated and suppressed in our settings to make us feel that we are not important. But, who cares! We have pledged to uphold the promises we made. We are there to draw an intrinsic worth into the minds of the people that search us.

We are provided with the abilities to care, bear, induce hope, reduce miseries and hold the irreparable potential to reduce pathology.

Nursing is an art that only certain gracious people are provided with, and we are real artists, we craft the beautiful souls.

We, as nurses, strive to sooth people, to evade their tears, to stabilise them, to motivate them, to comfort them, to make them feel refreshed, to transform their energy to live and to make them feel that we are a party to their pain.

The writer is an organising member of Kashmir Law Circle and a political columnist. He can be reached at tawfeeqirshad@gmail.com