Out of frustration and poverty, people end up in jobs/professions where they do not really belong. This is true of majority of nurses who work at KATH, Kumasi. There is no doubt about the fact that apart from the call to preach the gospel, if there is any other profession that requires a call, it is nursing. After years of practice, even those who end up in nursing without been called develop some love and passion for the job. It is amazingly surprising that those old folks of KATH who claim to have practiced nursing for over twenty years still lack the compassion, comfort, care, love, patience and even the knowledge that is required of them as professional nurses.

As a matter-of-fact and straightforward, most KATH nurses are there to intimidate, frustrate, harass, and to make things very uneasy for patients and their families. If there is any person who need compassion or need to be comforted, it is the sick person, the vulnerable in society and their family. Unfortunately, at KATH, the nurses want to be pampered; they want to be rewarded by patients and family members for service rendered. At KATH, it is the nurses’ world. Even in an attempt to ask them question, you are confronted with “ugly angry” look. The only thing they are good at is approaching you with a bell that “visiting hours are over” without giving exceptions to family members whose working hours do not allow them to visit within the scheduled visiting period. You would be surprised to find out that some of the visitors who are often turned away are spouses of patients who are on admission. I was shocked to see a patient crying in pain for over two hours without any treatment. None of the nurses who were gossiping at their station was able to say even just a word to calm or comfort the patient. Prudent nurses always pay attention to the agonies of their patients and they pay heed to the plights of their families. But at KATH, it is the contrary.

The spread of infection from patient to patient which ends up in numerous deaths at KATH are mostly due to the unprofessional practice by nurses. On several visits to various wards, I was shocked to see nurses using a single pair of gloves to care for as many as five (5) to eight (8) patients. The common and simple practice of hand washing was out of their minds. The only reason they give for using one pair of gloves for many patients care is “we don’t have enough”. How about hand washing? The surprising fact is that they wear the gloves only as a shield to protect themselves, forgetting that that unprofessional act result in infections that take the lives of human. At the expense of human lives, these nurses take the gloves to their homes, wear them to scrub their bathrooms and complain that “we don’t have enough” to care for our patients. And, at the expense of human lives, they refuse to wash their hands before and after each patient care even though there is water running through pipe-lines on all floors and wards. As a result of this unprofessional practice, most KATH nurses have become professional “man slaughters” who take the lives of patients with ease and with no feeling of guilt. Until this act is checked and rectified, the “man slaughtering” will continue. Since there is no legal consequence in place, those wicked nurses who care not about human lives will continue to kill because death is the end product of their unprofessional practices.

The goal of nursing practice is to produce beneficial effects related to the health, recovery, or peaceful death of clients. So, does the practice of nursing at KATH have the same goal? Instead of making a little effort to acknowledge the patient as an individual and a person of value, they perceive the sick person as a “thing of no value”. This is evidently clear from how they treat patients. But regardless of their physical diagnoses, the diseased state of their bodies, or the manifestation of physical symptoms, the true spirit of the person within the ill-person should not be forgotten. KATH nurses hardly think that their families or even they themselves could end up on the sick bed. And, if they end up that way, how would they want to be treated? It is always better to do unto others as you would want others to do unto you. Patients and families perceive KATH nurses effortless and their unwillingness to understand their feelings and emotions of their situations.

It is glaringly factual that caring for a dying and the very sick patient can be physically demanding and emotionally exhausting. The fact that it can also be the greatest act of love you will ever perform and be blessed cannot be underestimated. It would be absurd to compare the healthcare system in Ghana with those of the Western world in terms of technology but the natural act of healing-touch that comes at no cost is also missing in our health care system. Besides this act of therapeutic touch, most deaths and worsening diseased states of patients are mostly associated with the cruel language the nurses use. Friends and family members cry at KATH not because of the sickness but for the language the nurses use for them. Instead of embracing and addressing the needs of the dying patient and start prepare the family for the grieving process; they just refuse to have a word with the family and even sometimes accuse them of been the cause of their sickness and even death. Instead of practicing nursing, they end up practicing psychic. How we deal with the final years of life does much to define the kind of society we have. We must provide our patients with a peaceful and dignified death, with less pain if possible and with as little anguish and anxiety as possible. There is a saying that nurses have the touch and voice of angels but when it comes to nursing at KATH, you would even wonder whether they were taught how to care for the dying patient and their family or not.

Any reasonable professional will be unhappy when people doubt his/her professional capability. But it would not be surprising for even those who know nothing about nursing or healthcare to question the educational background and the knowledge base of nurses who work at KATH. Instead of being the patients advocate, they are very hash on the patients and their families and care less about their recovery. Instead of being empathic they hardly think that they can end up on the sick bed. And, instead of being compassionate, they only think about their paychecks and have no compassion. There cannot be a professional nurse who has no, empathy, love, care, compassion and, there cannot be a professional nurse who lacks the common professional ethics of caring for the sick person. In the absence of these qualities or features, KATH nurses represent nothing but a bunch of unprofessionals who about 90% of the time intimidate and frustrate patients.

If there is no policy in place to provide on-going refresher courses for these “old nurses” of KATH, it is about time they do that to enable them keep abreast with current practice protocols because it does not speak well of mother Ghana to have one of her teaching hospitals to be filled with nurses with unprofessional practice conducts. Quality lives are lost and the nation will keep on to loose lives if those nurses with unprofessional conducts and attitudes are not checked and punished or retrained.

Kwame Wiredu-Mensah, New York, US