‘DON’T BREAK THEIR TRUST’

“DO not break the confidence of your patients, it will break their trust in you.”

Noting that once it was gone, trust was often hard to be recovered, Registered Nurse Vera Layne urged these professionals to hold confidentiality first and foremost in their minds when dealing with clients.

“When a patient lets you into their circle of trust, understand the sacredness of it. It disturbs me to hear a patient’s business being bandied about, because I wouldn’t want everyone to know my business… When it gets back to them, they lose that trust in you and don’t want to attend clinic anymore. I know I wouldn’t. And then they often withdraw themselves from being treated, which only hurts everyone in the long run,” she said.

Layne was making a presentation from a Clinician’s Perspective during the Barbados Community College’s seminar entitled ‘The Impact of Stigma: Client and Family Perspective and Nurses’ Attitudes to Clients with Mental Health Illnesses’ for the Diploma in Psychiatric Nursing Class of 2016/2017 at the Solidarity House.

She reminded those gathered that their clients were people first and not defined by whatever condition ails them.

“So don’t be saying, ‘Oh that is the woman with the pog’, or ‘He’s de man that does be in at the mental.’ I have even heard the associations, ‘Oh don’t mind she cause she mudda head ain’t no good, so she can’t be no better.’ No! Each one of these individuals must be seen as a human being first, just like you and me,” she continued.

She went even further, querying whether the nurses practised discrimination against persons because of how they looked and who they were.

“If Ninja man walked into the clinic in a yellow outfit and handbag, would you take your time to ask him questions and find out what is going on with him or would you rush him back through the door? How would you treat him compared to if this man (pointing to a member of the audience) walked in? Would you address them the same?” she added. (JMB)