Two wrongs, we all know, cannot make a right. Therefore, while we condemn the brazen physical attack on a nurse at the Bustamante Hospital for Children last week Saturday, we cannot sanction the response of her colleague nurses.

In case you missed it, nurses at the hospital stopped working and mounted a protest - placards and all - after a nurse was hit in the face with a chair by a parent some time after 3:00 pm.

The assault was said to have taken place at the Accident and Emergency Unit after an argument over the breastfeeding of a child on a nebuliser.

Our story published in this week's Sunday Observer quoted a ward assistant, Ms Jennifer Ramgeet, as saying "It is an ongoing thing and we are fed up. It needs to stop".

Other nurses at the protest highlighted more cases of verbal abuse by parents and demanded that visitors not be allowed to take cellphones onto the property because the phones were often used by mothers to call boyfriends or relatives who turn up to threaten or abuse nurses and, in some cases, doctors.

It is an open secret that our medical professionals who work at public health facilities do not enjoy the best of environments. In most cases, the infrastructure of the hospitals and clinics in which they work is rundown, and they often are required to provide health care with meagre resources.

That, we hold, is a sure prescription for frustration which sometimes, unfortunately, spills over to patients, particularly in cases where those patients and their relatives grow impatient with the pace of service delivery.

But even as we accept that our health professionals are human and, as such, are subject to open displays of emotion, we expect that nurses and doctors are highly trained to keep their feelings in check and not retaliate in the face of abuse. Of course, we do not expect anyone to sit down and not defend themselves if they are under physical attack. For self-defence is their right.

However, where we parted company with the nurses at the Bustamante Hospital last Saturday was their decision to stop working, which, in effect, denied the many children at the hospital the care they needed.

Walking off the job and leaving sick children unattended simply cannot be justified, regardless of how frustrated, abused or demoralised one may feel.

On that score, the nurses demonstrated not only a lack of caring but unprofessionalism, albeit for a few hours. They would, we believe, have stood on firmer ground and generated greater public support had they highlighted their frustration at the abuse in ways that did not disrupt the operations of the hospital.

We support their call for the state to provide better security at the hospital, and we agree with the advice issued to parents by Mrs Edith Allwood-Anderson, the president of the Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ), that "parents must know that if they themselves don't guarantee the safety and security of the staff, then they will not have the nurses here to care".

The permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health and Environment, Mr Andre Franklyn, was quick on the scene last Saturday and promised better security for the hospital.
Let's see how quickly he will back up his talk with action.

Executive Class

Gardens with Gravel

Death to the Mullet!