International celebration : Nurses come together to heal on their day

Medics say there is a dire need for better service structure

LAHORE: Like all other parts of the world, Lahore observed International Nurses Day on Thursday to mark the contribution of these medical professionals who devoted their lives to saving ailing people.

“The profession of nursing requires more facilities, sense of security and better service structure, along with a healthy working environment,” commented Sir Ganga Raam Hospital Young Nursing Association General Secretary Yasira Siddiq. She said the working environment in Punjab hospitals depicted a growing trend towards physical abuse and sexual harassment at the workplace of nurses. “It’s like a battlefield in which Punjab’s nurses are still in fighting.”

“We are still struggling for the improvement of our service structure and other facilities,” she said adding that a number of more steps and initiatives were needed for the promotion of the nursing profession in Pakistan. Speaking on occasion, Services Hospital Chief Nursing Superintendent Samina Yasmeen said though the working environment for nurses was comparatively better than the past as people had now started understating the importance and nobility of the profession.



“Patients express even more confidence in nurses than doctors,” she commented, adding that there was a need for more 14,000 nurses in all teaching hospitals in Lahore. She was of the view that women nurses were a blessing for ailing humanity and worked shoulder-to-shoulder with their male counterparts to save human lives. She lauded the Punjab government for recruiting nurses through the Punjab Public Service Commission for the first time to ensure merit and transparency.

“The Punjab government has regularised nurses working on a contract basis, but the government should also regularise those experienced nurses working against the vacancies of board of management,” she stressed.

In their comments on the occasion, nurses Rashida Naureen, Nafeesa Ahmed, Gulshan and others said that the number of nurses must be increased in accordance with the rapidly rising number of patients in hospitals.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 13^th, 2017.