Tags
Compensation, Health, Hospital, Lawmaker, Nurse, OVerworked, Profession
Most people think that the nursing is a second class profession, they thought that nurses are simply just a doctor’s assistant. Nurses collaborate with doctors in rendering life saving procedures to the client. Nurses are not totally dependent on the doctors order, we do have our own process in providing total care to our clients. It is in this field that nurses are being exploited and at times are compelled to work more than 8 hours a day without proper compensation.
Working in a government hospital nurses are confronted with voluminous number of patients. There are instances where there are less than 10 nursing staffs on duty in a given shift and they have to take care of 100+ patients. These nurses are responsible for monitoring the clients vital signs, administer medications, carry out the doctor’s order, follow up laboratory results and provide health teachings. Instances like this nurses are not able to finish their responsibilities in a span of 8 hours thus they have to extend a few hours wrap up everything and endorse the things that they have done to the receiving shift.
Even if they are compelled to work for more than 8 hours a day, yet they are not well compensated, they are not being paid for the excess hours of work they they rendered to just provide proper and outright care to their clients. However, if they are late for work hospitals are quick to deduct their salary. Clearly this is a type of exploitation, an abuse perpetuated by their employers. Sadly, the government seems to have distance itself from this issue. You cannot hear politicians complain about this, the department of labor and employment appears to be in idle mode and the legislative and executive branch of the government clearly turns a blind eye to this reality.
Nurses are left to suffer and get exploited by their employers, yet you can never see nurses going on strike, rallying on the street and abandoning their job. Since we have in our hands the life of other people we cannot afford to abandon them at times where they needed us the most. The nursing profession is a very demanding job you get to work on holidays, missed important family occasions, shifting hours, expose to various hazards and stress can easily burnout anyone. Thus, nurses deserve to receive proper compensation and higher salary grade. Lawmakers are paid around P40,000 a month and they are not expose to biological hazards, shifting hours of work and they don’t hold a person’s life on their hands. They are not even required to have a college degree to become a lawmaker! Nurses are the one’s who should receive P40,000 a month not lawmakers.
We can only hope that the government will look into this matter and give nurses the compensation that they deserve in accordance to the value of their profession.
Musings Of A Nurse 
Yes..I agree that we Nurses should be given that much priority in terms of compensation. We are working diligently, serving patients to the best of our ability, being too compassionate and caring, with a mind that ” caring is our business ” yet being emotionally abused by patient and even employer, the LAW Makers should explore the posibility of increasing our salary so that Nurses will stay in our country, aside from that, create more job oppurtunities to avoid being exploited in other countries.