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Nursing
Practice in Vigan:
Looking Back and Moving On . . .
By
Rhoda R. Redulla, RN
With the
unprecedented shortage of nursing manpower in the
U.S, Europe and the Middle East, nurses, they say,
are the gold mine of the century. This is indeed a
far cry from the early beginnings of Nursing.
Almost a century ago nursing was considered a very
lowly job.
As a nurse
myself, this brings me to ponder on how Nursing
evolved as a profession. In the historical city of
Vigan, much has been written about the beginnings
of culture, faith, and other aspects of the
Ilocano way of life, but not of the nursing
practice – a vital chapter in the life story of
the Bigueños.
VIGAN’S
EARLIEST HOSPITAL
Vigan City is
where you can find century-old Spanish ancestral
homes.
Not known to
many, Vigan is one of the earliest Spanish
settlements along with Cebu and Manila. Vigan was
once the seat of trade and commerce in the North.
The development
of nursing can be viewed alongside the
establishment of the first hospital. The Frank
Dunn Memorial Hospital was established by the
American Missionaries in 1899 at a time when
Americans had fully occupied the city. Some
documents citing the first hospital in Vigan point
to the possibility that such hospital referred was
the Frank Dunn Memorial Hospital. The Verzosa
residence along Bonifacio St. is supposed to be
standing on the exact original location of that
hospital.
In the beginning,
the hospital was manned by one doctor, in the name
of Dr. Paul Palencia and a certain Mrs. Palencia,
a nurse. Nursing students would stay here for two
years, then go to Manila for more intensive
training.
Mrs. Rafaela T.
Biteng, one of the earliest graduates of
Philippine Christian Institute Hospital (PCIH) in
Vigan recounts significant details of her
experience as a student nurse. The nursing
students then had to undergo a three-month
probationary period. After this, they are already
qualified to join the capping ceremonies.
The training was
task-oriented and bedside care was at its peak. An
essential element of the training was to learn
proper disinfection of bed pans, sputum cups and
urinals; dusting window panes and bolts; and
ensuring the cleanliness of beds and tables.
Nurses were seen as mere servants of doctors and
it was perceived that nurses were doing the dirty
job.
When it comes to
work-shifts, we could say that nothing much has
changed since the early 1900s. Like most
institutions now, they have been adopting the
three–shifts-a-day schedule.
In 1928, the
government put up the Ilocos Provincial Hospital
(now the Gabriela Silang General Hospital). The
hospital was put up in what could be suitably
described as the dark ages in the health history
of Vigan. These were the years of various
epidemics. Smallpox. Cholera, influenza, and
dysentery came one after the other.
OUR
FIRST NURSES
In an era when
one has to travel to downtown either by foot or by
horseback, the existence of nurses were almost
unthinkable. During the World War II, nurses were
almost unheard of. In Vigan, medical care was
almost exclusively rendered by private physicians.
Dr. Librado Espiritu, one of the earlier doctors
in Vigan disclosed that medical care at that time
was almost handled exclusively by private
physicians. House calls were the practice among
the doctors with their wives as their personal
assistants.
In my
conversations with the older folks, I have known
that sick people during their time were never
brought to the hospital. It is only when they turn
to be extremely ill that medical help is sought.
People regarded scientific methods of healing as
strange and invasive.
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