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In Nigeria and some other African Countries today, nursing services comes in three basic shifts: Morning shift, Afternoon shift and Night shift. Theses shift are timed from commencement to Change of duty.
During each shift, specific nursing procedures are performed for patients who are in admission and those who are visiting the Hospital. Procedures include Bed Bathing, Wound dressing, Injection Rounds, Medication Rounds, Turning, lifting, oral care, ear syringing, treatment of pressure areas, checking of vital signs etc and summarized with a huge report writing to be handed over to the next shift nurses.
Comparing the services Nurses render in the Hospitals to other health care professionals engagement, taking the medical world into consideration surgery has it price, call duty has its price, consultation as well as rounds .
However, it is understandable and very obvious that nurses perform virtually every duty to patients who receives only a review or at its most Intravenous drugs administration from the physicians, yet they are more valued even by the patients who receive the least from that angle. One may wonder why other health care professionals still earns more that their nursing counterparts and also enjoys a better flexibly duty schedule.
Nurses Round took a step to uncover the reasons behind the ignominious degradation and found out that it is only because “Nursing services in this part of the World has no Price”. One may argue that some hospital still include it in the patients discharged receipt, but the price written is even more Downgrading that it feels as if it should not be written in the first place. We saw patients who stayed in a hospital for a Month plus and in the receipt we saw Nursing care………………N2000, It is laughable right? At least this can make you ask what is being charged. Is it the long standing hours or the report writing allowance? Or the lifting charges or the charge for oral toileting, not to talk of the caring of patient with fecal incontinence!
This raises an eyebrow wherever it is presented in other setting aside Africa and the big question is: who costs the nursing service for the nurses? Was it our “pioneers” or the same Nigerian Health care Generals….
I presume we need to go back to the drawing table carve out the appropriate cost equivalence for each service a Nurse renders to a patients or at least an hourly service of a nurse in any given duty post as we solely believe it will go a long way to affect the remuneration in the profession and as well encourage flexibly in our service hours.
With improved hourly based nursing service cost, and who knows working hours may be optional because our services are certainly priceless
You can read Cost of Nursing Services Part 2 here
Article written by Nurses Round
This is a very interesting discussion - how nursing is costed, and also how nursing is valued by society. My impression is that when people need nursing, they learn how important nursing is and do value it. But nursing as part of the health care system is taken for granted and under-valued... and in society generally care is not valued or rewarded as it should be.
ReplyDeleteIn UK costing of in-patient health care is set as national tariffs by the government. Nursing is included within the total cost of care - not itemised separately.
And the health services depend on the good will of nurses to provide essential and high quality care at below- market cost.
How can we make society value care?
Thank you for this great discussion. It is leading me to wonder how you document your work. Are nurses where you practice keeping clear patient charts? Documenting vital signs, fluid intake and output, daily care, patient’s mobility? What about nursing interventions, how are those documented? How is patient education provided, individually or in a group?
ReplyDeleteDo you have any innovations that you can share in how your practice has improved patient care effectively and reduced the work burden?
I will be happy to provide a summary of our discussion as requested by one of our members. You can always log into the Knowledge Gateway to see the discussion threads from all our discussions knowledge-gateway. If you have problems logging in, please let me know.
Kindly,