Life-long learning is a missing link in nursing — Prof. John

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Life-long learning is a missing link in nursing — Prof. John

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Professor Mildred John is a registered nurse, midwife and nurse educator. She was the second Vice President of West African College of Nursing. She has won many awards (professional and social). She is the
President of the Association of University Nursing Programmes in Nigeria. In this interview with LARA ADEJORO, the Don who was at the Nursing Leadership Summit held recently in Abuja explains how the nurses can live up to their tasks in the healthcare delivery system.

What’s your take on the theme of the summit which is, Nursing in Nigeria: Rethinking the missing link?
The missing link is the right education that will make the nurse take up the leadership skills in the healthcare delivery system and that right education should not make us think we are academicians but rather give us the critical thinking skills that will make us serve our patients better.

How can they take up the leadership role in the health sector?
By changing their attitudes and their practise because for now, the nursing profession has suffered a lot and that’s because some nurses are not doing what they are expected to be doing. We are shifting our tasks to the patients’ relatives, junior cadre nurses and because of that, we are doing very low. We seem not to be doing the core nursing activities again; hence, the public has lost faith in us. We have to go back to the basics of practising what we were taught as a nurse, caring for the patients from the heart not just from the head, caring from the patient’s perspectives not from the nurse’s perspectives because some of the patients in the contemporary healthcare now are very knowledgeable. A lot of them read the internet when they have any disease, they know what is wrong with them and when they come to a nurse and he or she is talking at a lower level, then there’s a problem. Life-long learning is another missing link. Some of the nurses, once they get trained as registered nurses, they don’t want to go back to school again, even to attend workshops is a problem unless they are sponsored. Whereas, life-long learning will continually help you improve on yourself and improve on your practise. So, you shouldn’t necessarily wait to be sponsored.

You have been in the profession for over 30 years, what was nursing like then?
Nursing now has progressed than the time I came into profession. When we entered nursing, we were not encouraged to think critically. The doctors would always tell us what to do. Even after taking a patient’s temperature, we would wait for a doctor to tell us what to do. But now, the nurse doesn’t need to wait for the doctor. Once you take a patient’s temperature, you know what to do. That’s the major difference between nursing then and nursing now.



On quackery, how can one identify quacks in the profession and can they be tamed?
It’s difficult to identify quacks but the practise of the person will show you whether the person is a quack. A quack has not got the basic training but a trained nurse has got all the training and it will show in her practise because she has learnt the procedure in the correct way. Registered Nursing Certificate qualifies one to be a professional nurse. If you don’t have that, you have no business calling yourself a nurse.

Do we have enough nurses to care for the number of patients trooping into the hospitals?
No, we don’t. We have a nurse to more than 10 patients whereas the World Health Organisation (WHO) stipulates that, it should be a nurse to four patients but we are far from that in Nigeria and it’s even worse in rural areas. From the last record, the number of trained and registered nurses was 210, 000 and the problem is that, when they are trained, a lot of them look out for greener pastures abroad because those countries pay well. You can’t compare Lagos to England because the amenities are there. You are able to practise nursing abroad as taught because they have resources in the hospitals and the pay is good.

What do you think can be done to improve the health sector in Nigeria?
With more budgetary allocation to the health, then the sector can be improved. So far, the allocation to the health is below what is supposed to be. The health of the people should be taken with all seriousness.

credit: dailytimes.com
Together We Light Up The Profession one candle at a time.
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