Nursing in Jamaica -- The Infirmary

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

Today was probably the most emotional, hardest, and most tiring day so far.

It is also the most wonderful.

Today, a group of students were chosen to go to an infirmary. It is a kind of long-term care facility, except they do not pick and choose who they take. They take the poor, the sick, the homeless, the mentally ill, the elderly the crippled, and anyone who simply needs help. It is not uncommon for people to be dropped off at their gates and left...no history, just the knowledge that they need help. It is run by a single woman Matron is her title (the highest title for a nurse in Jamaica). She is the only trained RN in this facility (despite there being around 50 people there). And she has to be one of the most amazing women I have ever met.

The place, when compared to nursing homes of America, might seem like a shack at first. There may have been as many as 20 beds in one large room where the patients stayed. However, not a single one of the rooms smelled of the urine and feces that I think of when I think of even some better hospitals and their private rooms. Bed sores were unheard of, and no incontinent patient was ever left uncleaned.

The secret to this woman's success: love.

She told us the most important thing you can do to treat patients is give them love. I feel like this is the concept, of treating people with love, that first lead me into nursing, and yet it is a principle that seems to be forgotten. I saw the meaning of true beauty and love in this place. Seeing these people, who some had just left and abandomed, so well taken care of was the purest example of Christ's love I have ever seen.

We got to see a tour of the place (it was right on the sea), and then she took us around to meet the patients. She told us to welcome them, and one man stood and began to sing to us. They all joined in. It was perhaps the most beautiful thing I have ever seen or heard. And I was so touched I had to fight to keep from crying.

More wonderful things happened that day. When I worked with the dentist who came with us, I and a few of my fellow classmates got to assist in rebuilding teeth, something that truly made the patient happy. But all day those faces stayed with me, but the person who remains with me, is the woman who loved them so deeply. When I think of the nurse I want to be one day, she's it.

It's funny. I came here to change lives; instead, I find it is my life that is being changes.

My lesson today: You should travel not in the hopes of teaching others, but to learn from others.

~Chante'