And switching gears to more positive news now, Nurses Week started today May 6th and goes up until Thursday, May the 12th, Florence Nightingale's birthday.
It's a time to shine a spotlight on the hundreds of nurses across Belize's healthcare system who play a vital role in patient care.
And today, to kick off the celebrations I visited several wards at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital to get a glimpse of these dedicated women and men hard at work for health.
Nurses, they're the heart and soul of the health system, and the largest single profession within the medical field.
Theirs is a job that hinges on knowing a little about a lot, having unfailing empathy, and fighting an often losing battle with the reality of death.
But they're more than just the historical and media archetypes. They're real people who wake up every day to do an often difficult job.
Who could forget the impact made by Casilda Bowman and the entire nursing staff of Belize's Covid wards who steered us through the darkest moments of the pandemic?
And as iconic as those contributions are the role of the nurse doesn't begin and end with wars, pandemics, and national emergencies, nurses are always on call doing everything in their power to care for and support individual patients through the hardest of times.
And this morning ahead of nurses' week we spoke to one nurse caring for patients who've yet to start a life outside of the hospital.
Neruli Williams, Unit Manager, Neonatal Intensive Care
"Here we're responsible for the care of the pre-term or the newborn babies, whether pre-term or any babies that have, thier not healthy at birth whether they have malformations, they are born prematurely, they have problems breathing, they need surgery, that's what we do from birth to 28 days."
"The main thing right now is that we are short of staff so a lot of the time we are working with not enough or not adequate staff in regards to the number of patients that we have to take care of but I must say thanks to the team that I work with a lot of the times nurses come in and do overtime so that we can better care for our patients."
"In Belize we expect babies over 28 weeks to survive and go home but we had several babies 26, 27 weeks who manage to go home and then we also have some surgeries like a couple of years ago we had a surgery that was done for the first time in Belize and the baby made it and went home and well, he's doing great so far."
And whatever the illness and stage in a person's life one thing they can count on is that their nurse will strive to keep their best interests at heart.
Cherisse Halsall:
"You often think, I'm sick I need a doctor but tell me, why is it that people need a nurse?"
Charlene Ferguson, RN, Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital
"Well, because the nurse is the one that is at the bedside and the nurse is the one that is observing the patient and building that relationship with that patient and we can see what they need besides the orders that the doctor prescribed you know. So, we just monitor them and if they have any concerns or issues we will take that to the doctor and we would advocate and be the voice for our patients right, so we support them because we are here to you know communicate so communicate with us and we'll support you."
As you can see nurses run the gamut from supporting players to everyday warriors, many of them, like the ones in accidents and emergencies have the daily responsibility of fighting to save lives.
Kendra Vernon, Assistant Unit Manager, Accident and Emergency
"Our daily duties comprise of having the area prepared for when any emergencies come in whether it's by staff or having our equipment and our supplies readily available and then we operate on a 5 level basis and so in that instance we can categorize our patients and deal with them based on our priorities."
"At accident and emergency we see almost everything daily and we are different from other nurses because we have to deal with them as they come. We don't get any like call, sometimes we do get calls that, and we know what types of patients are calling but like I said we have to deal with them as they come so we have to always be prepared here at the emergency unit."
The KHMH nurses told us that what they love about their jobs are the opportunities they have to help people and to make sure that whether their hospital stays are long or short, they are comfortable and never lacking in dignity.
We'll continue the celebration on Monday when representatives from the KHMH's nursing staff appear on Sunup on 7.
https://youtu.be/
