This week, Larissa and I went to the hospital to talk to one
of the nurses there. I was
interested to hear her impression of the young girls in La Merced and their
knowledge of reproductive health, as well as her experience with women and what
sort of resources the hospital had to offer them. At the time, I had no knowledge of the unexpected direction
that this interview would take. I
was told that Jenny was the head nurse and that she would be the person to talk
to. We met her at the hospital in
the morning, and to my surprise she was a younger girl. As “head nurse”, I was expecting to
meet a woman who had been working at the hospital for decades. Jenny has worked at the hospital in La
Merced for the past 6 months.
Apparently, there is a national policy in Colombia, which requires all
doctors, nurses, and dentists to do one year of social work as part of their
degree programs. Jenny had been
assigned to La Merced for her year of rural medical work, and has 6 more months
of work in La Merced ahead of her.
After talking with her for a few minutes, we learned that her role as
head nurse was somewhat by default, since she is the only certified nurse
working in the hospital. There are
7 nurse assistants who have not received the same training that she has, and
don’t perform the same tasks that a full time nurse would. Needless to say, Jenny has been very
busy for the past 6 months. She
also told us that until recently, there were 3 doctors working in the
hospital. Last week, one of them
decided to quit due to “political reasons.” The two doctors that remain are actually students in the
same program as Jenny. Not only do
these doctors have minimal experience, but also they will only be working at
the hospital for the next year, before moving back to a larger hospital in the
city. From what she has learned
during her time here, she says that this is the normal cycle of staffing at the
hospital. Mostly, the nurses and
doctors are working there as a part of this degree program and leave each year,
while new interns arrive. So there
is never really a seasoned staff of doctors or nurses to treat the people of La
Merced.
When we asked Jenny why she thought that it was so difficult
to keep the hospital sufficiently staffed, she told us about a meeting she had
recently attended. There was
discussion about the paramilitary history of La Merced. La Merced became a center for
paramilitary training in the 1990s and early 2000s, and the municipality was
strongly controlled by a paramilitary group. The severe loss of population in La Merced is largely due to
this history of conflict that has left its mark on the town. Jenny told us that up until about 10
years ago, while the paramilitary group was occupying the town, they placed
officers in the hospital. These
officers monitored who was coming in for treatment, and told the doctors which
patients they were allowed to treat, and which ones they needed to turn
away. After hearing this story, it
became clear why it was so difficult for the hospital to maintain a sufficient
and capable staff. Her jarring
story reminded us of the very real violence and darkness that the town had been
put through. La Merced’s history
is something that we have all been aware of even before coming here. It’s something that sits in the back of
my mind every time I learn something new about the town, or hear another
person’s story. But it’s not
something that has ever been out in the open. It’s not often that you hear people referring to it
directly, so it’s easy for the stories and facts that we’ve read to remain
intangible notions in my mind. These
facts take on a whole new meaning when they are brought into reality, which is
what happened for me that day at the hospital. The conflict may be over, but there are still very visible
consequences that the town endures.
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