“I remembered I got to use my ‘nursing’ skills last Raya. I received a call from my father asking me to come over to my uncle’s place. He told me his fingers were bleeding after he played some fireworks. I said, “Okay”. Luckily, we all lived in the same kampung (village) so my father went to pick me up. I brought my first aid kit to treat him. It wasn’t as bad so I could do it and he didn’t need to go to the hospital.
I’m currently a second-year student in a nursing school in Brunei.
We were told to have empathy and to not get too attached to our patients. When patients pass away, we had to maintain our professionalism. And this reminded me of a patient. She’s around my grandmother’s age, she’s old. When we went to our hospital ward for the first time, we saw how she was smiling all the time.
Whenever she asked for new clothes and new bedsheets, or ask someone to accompany her to the toilet, she would always ask for us, the students. It was as if the staff nurses weren’t there for her because she favours the students more than the staff. So, that’s what we really liked about her. And on our final day of our nursing attachment, we get to salam (bid goodbye) to her.
There’s this one time when I was in the male ward. There was a wife who’s taking care of the husband. However, the husband’s doctor was female. So, the wife went up to the counter and asked who that doctor was. She was jealous. But I didn’t know what happened afterwards.
One unique thing about nurses in Brunei is that we do almost every job there. Except for the doctors’ work. For example, in other countries, nurses don’t draw blood from patients. There’s a special team that does just that. Whereas in Brunei we have to do that as well. We do everything because we’re quite understaffed.
But as nurses, we typically work 7-8 hours in the ward. So yeah, we have to know our patients and communication is really, really important in nursing. For me, taking care of elders is easier. I’m not really good with children.
I hope next year (2020), I could improve my results. And I always remember what my seniors advised me that burnout is inevitable in nursing. We need to have a lot of patience in what we’re doing, especially balancing our work with the patients and our assignments.”
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Photostory by Elly Zulaikha
Edited by Mushamir Mustafa
