Pretoria - Nurses have called for the outright rejection of the white uniform synonymous with the profession for decades.
According to the nurses, the uniform was “a product of apartheid and held back transformation”.
The white uniform was originally designed for Florence Nightingale’s school of nursing and signified hygiene and cleanliness, standing as the beacon of hope in a world overburdened by disease.
But pressure group and nurses’ association Young Nurses Indaba declared this week #NightingaleMustFall.
The organisation is made up of nurses from all unions, political parties and formations, in public and private practices.
“The idea that nurses must wear pristine white and work under any conditions was borne of the attitude Nightingale had to nursing,” said a founder member of the association, Lebogang Phehla.
He said Nightingale gave the impression that nurses did not need good working conditions. “Her work ethic robbed us of the professional courtesy we demand from our bosses.”
During the apartheid era, the uniform had been used to enforce segregation and poor living and working conditions, Phehla said.
“It is holding us back from transforming the profession; the government is not working with us to improve the health of the country. We will therefore enforce the change.”
But those were not the only problems associated with the white uniform.
“It is not user-friendly,” said Phehla.
There was no way to keep it clean from blood spatters, vomit and other products of sickness, especially after the government stopped buying the clinical apron worn over it for protection, said Phehla.
“They tell us of cost control, forgetting that we need scrubs to look professional and presentable,” he said.
The disease burden and high influx of foreigners put a strain on nurses physically and emotionally, and added to the workload.
“The ratios of nurses to patients are extremely high, and so by the end of the day, what was white when you came in is an unsightly colour.’’
The nurses will gather in Pretoria on Monday to march on Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi’s office and then the Nursing Council.
They will wear black and demand better pay and working conditions, and remind elected public representatives of their “plight and suffering” from outside the confines of bargaining structures.
Pretoria News