I
joined the then Royal Institute of Health Sciences in the summer of 1995 and
completed the course by December 1998. I joined as a staff Nurse on 1st
January 1999 in JDWNRH and that same year came my daughter. Since then life
became a race and I don’t remember pausing for a moment to think about anything
strategically. I took the life as it came. So the first two years of my service
was just shuttling between home and duty, and then came my son exactly after
two years after my daughter. Life got even busier and my placement in the ICU
made it worse. It demanded lot energy and time because of critical patients. Working
in the ICU used to be so tiring that I sometime used to think that doing Potato
business would be better alternative. One day I told this to Dr. Subba, our
Medical specialist and he had a nice laugh…..
In
Febuary 2002, I had to move to a District Hospital, Trashiyangtse my husband
got transfered. I took the responsibility of a Chief Nurse. It was quite
challenging because of various reasons. As usual, challenges came in many forms
to a nurse. It would vary from critical patients to demanding visitors, VIPs to
pseudo-VIPs, escorting obstructed Labour patients to Head injury cases and that
too in summer, covering nursing shortages to dealing with laid-back medical
officers, dealing with colleagues who demands day-offs during
weekends……….(infinite challenges)…..
My
subsequent placements were in Monggar Hospital (2004-2006) and then again
transferred to Samtse Hospital (2007-2011). Those years I juggled between work
and studies. I completed my Bachelors in Nursing and then continued my Master
degree. Even those years wasn’t easy, I had five young children going to
school. Each day children would come back from school with lots of home works
and other activities which demanded lots of our attention. Attending night
shift and settling down to write academic assignments were indeed a herculean
task. But I have done it and I am proud that I have gone through all these.
I
am writing about about sixteen wonderful years of being a Nurse. I don’t know
how but I just became a Nurse one day. Since then I have never looked back and
I never felt the need to look back and see what has happened to my life in
particular and to the rest, until one day I got a call to present a paper
during Nursing Symposium in October
2015. That particular call made me to think twice that I have come a long way
as Nurse….not only as a Nurse but a senior Nurse deemed for giving a talk on
Nursing and its contribution towards Universal Health Coverage. I wasn’t sure
if I was ready but a challenge well taken.
