Harbi, a Saudi nurse, works 12 hours a day. Being Head Nurse in the Adult - Oncology Department at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center, it's her responsibility to ensure that the patients in her care get every attention possible. Nursing ailing people is a very demanding task, a challenging career choice not for the faint-hearted.. “I work 12 hours a day and so cannot always give as much time as I'd like to my children,” said Sahar. Annie B. Manuel, a Filipina nurse in another hospital here, who has 32 years experience, agrees that the job has always been very demanding. “It's all a matter of having a lot of patience,” she said. “The most difficult part is when a patient becomes very hard to please and overreacts. We have to contain ourselves and be tolerant.” Every patient poses a new challenge for nurses since each has a different mindset, a different level of tolerance and a different set of health problems. “This is why this job is highly sensitive,” said Annie. “A single small mistake can create enormous complications. It's not the kind of job that eventually becomes routine. And there are always times when they just have to give way to compassion and put in that extra effort. “Sometimes when patients behave like children and want us to be with them even after our duty hours, we give them extra time,” said Annie. “Kind words from the community are enough to encourage us in our work.” Glady Martin, a Filipina nurse who has been working in the emergency department of a hospital here for the last two years said the job becomes very challenging when patients show weakening willpower. “The patient's willpower to overcome any kind of sickness is the most important thing,” Glady said. If a patient comes to realize this as a result of our treatment, it is a great achievement for us. Like Annie and Glady, Normina Mudgor, a maternity department nurse, also comes from a different culture. She said it does not pose much of a problem. “Although patients may come from different countries, they behave in similar ways.” The important thing is that a nurse should be strong enough to deal with different kinds of patients, she said. But for all their strength and effort, nurses in the Kingdom do tend to feel they don't get their due. “Nurses are silent workers whose hard work and dedication deserve more acknowledgment from the community,” said Sahar, one of a growing number of Saudi females who have taken to the profession in recent years. Sahar said that nurses should be better paid for the selfless work they do and that sometimes they do not get encouragement enough. “If our own problems are well understood by the hospital staff, we will feel much better psychologically, and it will then be easier for us to deal with patients.” She suggested that hospitals ought to have nurseries to assist nurses who have newborn babies or young children. Sahar said she loves nursing but the long working hours and the lack of day are facilities which keep her away from her children has of late compelled her to consider changing her profession to education. She is still in two minds though. “There is no substitute for the immense pleasure I get when patients offer us their sincere thanks for the care we have given them,” she said. Although we are only doing our job, their expression of gratitude is a great encouragement for us.” Normina felt that public perception here about nursing needs to change. “As long as I have been a nurse, I've strongly supported the idea that nursing is as important a profession as law, medicine, architecture, dentistry or education,” she said. Glady felt that gratitude from patients, though uplifting, won't suffice. “It is not all about passion and love of our profession,” Glady said. “Even as we serve the patients in the best way possible, we also work to earn a living.” __
