Name of health worker: Oryem Denis Amuku
Occupation: Nurse
Hoima Regional Referral Hospital
The fueling spirit of the Nightingale pledge enabling the nurse to push on
As a nurse with training to work in the COVID-19 Treatment Unit (CTU), it was equally scaring to face the reality of a disease which had claimed millions of lives including health care professionals worldwide but I remembered 2 things that compelled me to push on that is Nightingales’ pledge and my calling to serve humanity.
Seeing me entering and coming out of the COVID19 Treatment unit (CTU), my relatives and friends grew more detached but from a professional point of view, this was okay. I became more observant and practised infection prevention and control (IPC) for both patients and staff members. It was maybe such practices from us and other team members made sure that none of us got infected while on duty.
The patients’ monitoring devices were inadequate thus their numbers need to be increased. Our CTU only had one patient monitor which was used on both suspected and confirmed cases, for rapid assessment and monitoring of these patients who were critically ill. This further compromised IPC and minimized standard monitoring of patients.
Housing facilities need to be provided for staff and COVID19 patients since we had to keep suspects in the red zone at the CTU due to inadequate facilities for isolation in the main hospital. The suspects could easily become infected with COVID-19 because of repeated contacts with the cases in that area. Furthermore, staff allowance need to be timely paid including providing meals and refreshments to not only patients
Many of these issues we had including stock-outs of drugs and personal protective equipment (PPE) were addressed through meetings though most of them required an increase in funds. This was a point of frustration because there was always not enough money allocated to procure the standard of what was required.