Every year, May 12 is celebrated as International Nurses Day. Nurses have always been the backbone of the healthcare sector. Their contribution to patient treatment outcome often goes unacknowledged as in the pandemic. Their services and placement in critical treatment areas are subject to flexible criteria and dynamics of prevalent situations.
Nurses have helped and guided me immensely leading up to becoming a neurosurgeon. I had taken a couple of entrance examinations for neurosurgical training in 2001 after graduating as a general surgeon. The results invariably waitlisted me.
Having qualified from a small town, I was initially overwhelmed by the weight of clinical exposure of the competition of big-town applicants. An institute in Thiruvananthapuram, where I had applied for neurosurgery residency, required a clinical examination as part of the entrance examination. Having completed the general surgery course in my hometown Mangalore a few months earlier, I had no medical school affiliation. I was without credentials to enter a hospital and examine a neurological case to prepare for the test. The last time I had examined a neurological case was four years ago, during the MBBS course. I went to the neurology section of the medical ward of the medical college hospital and put forth my case to the senior sister in-charge. She understood my situation and asked me to come with an apron and expired ID card to the ward after the resident doctors had left for the day. For over a month and after sundown, I read case files, treatment charts and examined patients with stroke, spine trauma and other brain and spine illnesses. Two months later, I could confidently present a case of pituitary tumour assigned to me in the clinical round of the entrance test and went on to secure admission.
