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• Health and Medicine
• 08 / 22 / 2007

«In 1959, there were 828 nurses in Cuba. Today, we have 89,725. Of these, 25,022 are university graduates, 56,918 have advanced technical level training and 7,482 have basic training,» stated a participant at the 15th Congress of the Cuban Society of Nurses, held in the Havana Convention Center.

«Our work has changed considerably and has become a great profession,» said Daisy Berdayes Martinez, dean of the Faculty of Nursing of Havanas Higher Institute of Medical Sciences, speaking to JR.

«We are not assistants anymore, but real professionals and scientists. We emerged as assistants to doctors in taking care of the sick and injured; but years have passed and now we practice a science. «Our specialty began with one researcher, Florence Nightingale, an example of abnegation, mother of modern nursing and founder of the worlds first nursing school. In the Crimea War, she was the first hospital manager. In addition, Nightingale created professional nursing. She was and continues to be an inspiration for the courageous and noble men and women who have decided to devote their lives taking care of the sick.

«We are really the backbone of the great majority of medical teams around the world. We work with doctors, engineers, technicians and paramedics to solve the problem of the sick and injured.

«We work with physicians, psychologists, therapists, physiotherapists, and other professionals. Each treats the patient according to their speciality, but we are with the sick the 24 hours.

«At the end, those in pain or sick trust us very much. Our relation with the people we are taking care of goes beyond their treating illnesses. We are concerned with their feelings, how they are, how they feel.

«Its not the same with doctors, whose main task "when they are not consulting" is to visit the patient, and then they leave the room and come the next day. Our work is very different, and I say it without discrediting theirs, of course.»

An extraordinary five-year period

The last five years have been extraordinarily important for nurses in Cuba. In 1999, the Masters Degree in Nursing program began, and since 2001 three specialties emerged: Critical Care, Community Care, and Child and Maternal Care.

The first graduates will receive their diplomas at the end of this year. Two more majors will be approved: Mental Health Nursery and Surgical Nurse. It means that for the first time we are going to have people who are trained as nurses, and at the same time they are specialized in a field of their profession. «We must use state-of-the-art technology without losing the human sense of the treatment of people. That is the main task and the reason for being a Cuban nurse, » said young graduate Maikel Ruballo Dickenson, who works in one of the modern ambulances of the Integrated Medical Emergency System (SIUM by its acronym in Spanish) in the province of Sancti Spiritus.

And he adds, «The employment of the most sophisticated "equipment" we have in Cuba does not interfere with the care given to a person who is sick or has had an accident or is simply not feeling well. »

Joel Leyva Rodriguez, nurse of Intensive Care at the Cardiology Center in William Soler Hospital, said that «nurses are there 24 hours a day with patients. They can be either in a medical post or at the top of a mountain, in a country or an urban hospital, in an office of a neighborhood doctor, in a research institute or in an ambulance. Their hands, their minds and their hearts must beat at the same pace as the relative of the person we are treating and accompanying. If they dont work like that, they are not true professionals. »

Silvio Ernesto Socorregut, nurse at the Operation Room in the Cira Garcia Central Clinic in Havana, says that «the nurses conscious must come first, together with knowledge. One can have the latest technology, but if they dont have a real interest in providing services with care, love and efficiency "as the patient deserves" then the work is practically negated. »

Pedestal of Cuban medicine

Juleiky Garcia Beracierto, a nursing graduate and deputy director of personal teaching at SIUM in Ciego de Avila, believes that «nurses play a very important role; more important than many people think. They prevent healthy people from getting sick, and take care of those who have gotten sick. They are actually the support, the base, the pedestal of Cuban medicine. Nurses are included in all the health programs of the Ministry of Public Health. Some people say they are the right hand of the doctor. Others say they are the left hand, too. »

But it is not enough to think that nurses are the base, it has to be assumed every day. Thus, it is important, as Noel Viera Valdes notes, that the nurse becomes increasingly more careful with those who depend on them, and that they have the best working conditions possible. That is the opinion of a young male nurse working at the Juan Manuel Marquez Childrens Hospital in Havana Marianao neighborhood.

Oneida Torres Mendoza, vice-director of nursing in Pinar del Río, with many years of experience in neonatal intensive care, confesses that «in our lines are neonatal nurses, who are usually women. They are the ones that put the gloves on; they reach into the incubator and take care, feed and watch for the vital signs of the newly-born, without asking what the infants parents do for a living.

«In matters of fraternal love, of helping the helpless and giving comfort to the sad, one cannot expect to be asked; dont think that you are giving more than what you receive, she confesses. Whoever comforts a sad heart, actually receives more than they give. »

Right now a number of young and not-so-young nurses are trying to lower the fever of a child or carefully overseeing the condition of an intensive care patient. In moments like those, the years of study and training are vital, but they are not enough.

In the words of Nurse Maikel Ruballo Dickenson, «the noblest part of a human being is not the heart, but the shoulder. No matter how much we do to save the life of the patient, the person we are taking care of can die. Their family is going to cry on our shoulder, convinced that we tried to prevent the death.»

Source: By Luis Hernandez Serrano, Juventud Rebelde