Halleluyah Clinic commemorates International Nurses Day
Schoonbee
Halelluyah Primary Health Care Clinic in Schoonbee Landgoed Farms outside Groblersdal, has on Thursday 12th of May, joined the rest of the world to celebrate the annual International Nurses Day.
The International Council of Nurses (ICN) announced this year’s theme as: “Nurses, A Voice to Lead – Invest in Nursing and Respect Rights to Secure Global Health.”
The day was declared by the World Health Organization, to recognize the birthday of Florence Nightingale, an English social reformer and the founder of modern nursing, after she had taken care of wounded soldiers during the Crimean War in the 18th century.
During her time, Nightingale set a vision to professional nursing after discovering the link between disease and healthcare, from the cleanliness of wards to the food and quality of the air patients received.
When addressing the event, guest speaker of the day, Dr Rachel Sobola, reflected on the role played by Nightingale to root-in her humanity duties to endorse and position nursing as a modern profession.
“Nightingale was so dedicated to her calling when helping the injured soldiers at the time. By this I am reflecting on where we come from. I think it is very important to know how this profession has started,” she said.
Sebola reiterated that the Covid-19 exposed the weaknesses caused by the under-investment in health systems around the world.
“It was like we were waking up, the pandemic caused us to wake up from the under-investment in health system, not only in South Africa, but to the rest of the world,” she said.
Sebola indicated that the 2022 Nurses Day theme demonstrates the need for government to invest in nursing to build a resilient highly qualified workforce, with a capacity to recover from its difficulties.
“A workforce that has resilience is able to overcome its problems. We need a highly qualified nursing workforce because there are many areas of specialization in nursing. We need people who are specialists and know the profession deep,” explained Sebola.
She said nurses are entitled to a safe work environment and have rights to get decent wages.
“The environment where we find our people working is very important. It is important to note that nurses have suffered tremendously throughout the pandemic, they have been unnecessary exposed to the virus. Nurses face physical and verbal attacks from the public, suffer from extreme workloads while continue to be under-paid and under-valued,” she said.
Sebola encouraged nurses to have proper representative that will take part in decision making at their working environment.
Sister Popi Mavuso, a nurse at Groblersdal Clinic, said the day has also meant to commemorate the legacy of nurses who passed away because of pandemic, front liners are faced with in their day-to-day duties.
“It is good if we nurses be informed of everything that is prevailing around us so that we catch up with the development, especially now when we are having the developmental Covid-19 pandemic,” she said.
The event was wrapped with lighting of a lamp and a pledge in which all the attending nurses participated. Nurses from neighbouring clinics including Groblersdal and Unjani Clinic Moteti also attended the event.
