On Wednesday, the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives, Obafemi Awolowo Teaching Hospital, Ile-Ife branch, challenged the Association of Resident Doctors in the hospital to seek redress in court rather than going on strike over alleged harassment by a nurse.
Doctors in the hospital had announced a two-day warning strike to protest the alleged harassment of one of them by a senior nurse in the hospital’s Female Adult Orthopaedic Ward, because the doctor had refused to dispose of garbage generated after a surgical procedure.
However, in a statement obtained in Osogbo on Wednesday, signed by the association’s chairman and secretary, Comrade O. Ajayi and O. Oyeniyi, respectively, NANNM exonerated the nurse on duty on the day of the event.
The nurses contended that there was nothing improper with requesting that one of the doctors who generated the waste dispose of it.
The Association also said its lawyer had written to the OAUTHC management to protect the personal and professional rights of the nurse and all nurses at large in the hospital.
The statement further read in parts, “If the resident doctors are confident enough that their member is harassed illegally, why not honourably seek legal redress and unbiased judgment from the court of law, instead of threatening to further put innocent lives at risk. Will the loss of lives of Nigerians be a legitimate remedy for enforcing global best practices of waste management?
“As a legally compliant association, the Lawyer of NANNM has written to the OAUTHC management to protect the personal and professional rights of the nurse and all nurses at large in the OAUTHC and the world, at large.
“The principle of duty of care dictates that “whoever generates waste must segregate and dispose it.” The refusal of the nurse to put the life of other healthcare workers and environmental staff at risk that the waste generated by the resident doctors must be appropriately segregated and discarded cannot be refuted, hence the need to call for action by the nurse.”
It also further said that nurses in the OAUTHC had agreed to continuously uphold the “duty of care” to ensure that the ward environment remained safe for the patients, relatives, and the entire staff within the hospital, adding that it would not tolerate more intimidation or professional harassment from members of the ARD in the hospital.
