Car­ol Quash

When Dionne Ovid be­came a nurse 16 years ago, it was just as a way of se­cur­ing per­ma­nent em­ploy­ment.

But her per­cep­tion changed with time, paving the way for a lev­el of com­mit­ment that rarely comes with­out a love for a pro­fes­sion.

On May 10, she was pre­sent­ed with the T&T Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion’s Reg­is­tered Nurse of the Year award for her ded­i­ca­tion to the work she now has no re­grets choos­ing, and to her pa­tients at the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal Cam­pus, where she is as­signed to the Crit­i­cal Care Unit.

“I didn’t even know I had been nom­i­nat­ed, and I was shocked when I got the text mes­sage,” Ovid told Guardian Me­dia.

“Not that I don’t know that I’m ca­pa­ble and I am de­serv­ing. It’s just that some­times it’s not al­ways about the award and the recog­ni­tion.”

For her, it’s al­ways been about do­ing her job with com­pas­sion, some­times hav­ing to get cre­ative when re­sources are not read­i­ly avail­able.

In 2018, she came up with a con­cept she named the DoBlock—an or­gan­i­sa­tion­al tool to help re­duce mishaps and clut­ter in the In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU).

“And even though this didn’t take off as I had hoped, what I was hap­py about was that it gave oth­er nurs­es the in­spi­ra­tion to do some­thing out­side the box. Be­cause we are al­ways cre­at­ing, we are al­ways in­no­vat­ing, we are al­ways fig­ur­ing it out. What the pub­lic doesn’t know is that we have to use what­ev­er re­sources we have to en­sure that the pa­tient has the best care.”

She re­calls hav­ing to use card­board and ban­dages to make makeshift boots to help pa­tients in the ICU with plan­tar flex­ion, com­mon­ly known as foot drop.

“They’re not walk­ing be­cause most times they’re se­dat­ed or paral­ysed for a long time, you can see the feet point­ing to­wards the bed rather than lift­ed to­wards the ceil­ing. Some­times the plan­tar flex­ion boots are not avail­able and we have to im­pro­vise…My aes­thet­ics are hor­ri­ble, but it is ef­fec­tive,” she said with a chuck­le.

Ovid is al­so a part-time clin­i­cal in­struc­tor at the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the in­sti­tu­tion at which she her­self was once a nurs­ing stu­dent. She now has a Mas­ter’s in Ed­u­ca­tion with an em­pha­sis in health pro­mo­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, and rem­i­nisced on how her ca­reer in nurs­ing un­fold­ed.

“I kept try­ing to get a job and I would do any­thing and every­thing that I could. I found my­self in con­struc­tion at one point, I did the Geri­atric Ado­les­cent Part­ner­ship Pro­gramme, I was in Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps Pro­gramme, I worked in a hard­ware, did on-the-job train­ing. And I kept ask­ing, ‘when will I get some­thing per­ma­nent?’ I ap­plied to the po­lice ser­vice and coast guard,” but to no avail.

Even­tu­al­ly, her moth­er sug­gest­ed she get in­to nurs­ing and, al­though it was not some­thing she thought she would like, she de­cid­ed to do it. It was not an easy jour­ney, she said, but she took it in stride, giv­ing of her best in the class­room and on the wards.

“I wish peo­ple could see the depth of what we do…It’s a sat­is­fac­tion and a God-giv­en abil­i­ty and bless­ing.”

But Ovid’s com­pas­sion ex­tends be­yond car­ing for pa­tients. In 2022, she start­ed a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion, Nurs­es Fra­ter­ni­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, with the ob­jec­tive of tak­ing care of the care­givers.

“Be­cause as much as we pour in­to peo­ple, we can­not ex­pect oth­ers to pour in­to us. We have to pour in­to our­selves.”

She said she has wit­nessed too many of her col­leagues get sick and die be­cause they were so busy tak­ing care of oth­ers that they didn’t take the time to take care of them­selves, some on the cusp of re­tire­ment.

“We want to change that nar­ra­tive. When we start­ed this or­gan­i­sa­tion, it came out of memo­r­i­al ser­vices that we were keep­ing for our col­leagues who died dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.”

She said the or­gan­i­sa­tion is there to sup­port work­ing and re­tired nurs­es in any ca­pac­i­ty it can – med­ical­ly, fi­nan­cial­ly, so­cial­ly, emo­tion­al­ly and oth­er­wise – as long as it has the re­sources to do so.

“We are al­so com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing ed­u­ca­tion. So we do sem­i­nars and work­shops based on the top­ics that nurs­es want to re­al­ly gain knowl­edge about and ex­per­tise in.”

And for the over­achiev­er that she is, the San­gre Grande moth­er of one said when she was first as­signed to the East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, one of her dreams was to be­come a le­gal ad­vis­er to the re­gion.

“I don’t know where that came from, but it was a con­sid­er­a­tion. Right now, though, I won’t mind study­ing to be­come a nurse prac­ti­tion­er,” an ad­vanced lev­el of nurs­ing that al­lows for the ex­am­i­na­tion of pa­tients, the di­ag­no­sis and treat­ment of ill­ness­es.

“Which seems kind of un­at­tain­able at this point be­cause of the cost,” but some­thing that re­mains on the ta­ble of goals.