12 September 2012

Simple Rules Bhutanese Break Every Day

More than often we see people smoking in a room where there is 'No Smoking' written in bold, a car parked right on the 'No Parking' space, people talking aloud in the area where it's clearly written 'Silence Please', pile of rubbish around the sign that reads 'Do Not Litter' and worst of all there is no 'Do Not Spit' place without thick bloody read doma spit. Can't we read these simple words? Forgive the people who can can't read, but what about the literate folks who are often the ones breaking these simple rules.
Bulls don't get it! We do.
During my week long stay in JDWNRH I have been an observer to many conflict between sick attendants and G4S guards, sick attendants and nurses, and visitors and G4S. In all these fights I saw how our people find themselves at right after breaking numerous hospital norms. First they come when it's not visiting hour, and when G4S guards stop them they pick up fights. Inside 'one patient one attendant' rule is broken, and when nurses remind them they find the nurse bitchy. When the patient is in agony people crowd over it and won't let nurses do their job, nurse grow furious and shout at them to leave some space for air, and then these people counter. After visiting hour is over, no visitor leaves, not until the G4S boys come around thrice to chase them off. It's not a happy ending either. There is a big dinning room in the hospital and people eat and throw their waste in the space where clothes are meant to be dried.Wash basins are filled with food waste, when there is a separate dustbin to dispose leftover food.
I didn't see a space for problem if at all we could follow the simple rules written all over in Dzongkha and English both. Have I been perfect? No, I arrived late but I greeted the guards with apology and if they asked me to wait I would wait. My visitors left late too and they were shouted at by G4S but I have gone close to them and explained and apologized. But I have spent the rest of time entertaining the sick, clean the toilet, and at one time I have self appointed myself to investigate on a person who was smoking in the ward toilet. I failed to find him but nurses have flashed the message that if he is caught both the smoker and his patient will be kicked out of the hospital.
These people working at hospital at strange hours taking care of our people have their own family sleeping without them at home, and they get their hands in our shit and blood, which our own people won't do. Some of our folks won't even visit us at the hospital because they believe in 'Dhrip'(bad energy that comes with birthing and dying), and I say nurse and doctors would have died of that then. Hospitals are our gateway to the world and exit from the world and these people are the ones who help us at these critical hours.
I wish to send my deepest gratitude to the people working in Thimphu hospital and hospitals across the country for doing the dirty job for us and still tolerating our unending demands. I also pay respect to their frustrations,(after all there is a human inside those angels as well) which many great nurses have brought under their control. I also hope that those unreasonable, biased and arrogant people also change themselves so that one day everybody looks at hospital as a place of worship.

2 comments:

  1. Good post. Hospitals always have strict and scolding nurses. Not only in Bhutan, here in India also same. Even in private hospitals also. We must understand their frustrations: firstly they have to bend to the order of Doctors, secondly meet the demand of the patients and thirdly their work (they have to clean pus, blood, stool, urine and put their hand to the oddest body part.....) . At least lets not talk about their family frustrations. So, we must understand these things before we directly conclude into saying they are bitch.

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  2. It takes two bulls to make a fight. They are on duty and we need to respect that first. But we must agree there are a few people who don't have the lest passion for the profession and cry over their responsibility every day- for them no penalty is require since they are their own punishment.

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