Guest Column: Nursing students should lead by example
Nurses are heroes. They have worked and sacrificed to save lives while living through their own nightmare. There is little we can do to repay them for all their hard work and dedication.
However, I am appalled by nursing students on campus at USC Aiken. One of the first things people in the medical field should learn is hygiene and how to properly use Personal Protective Equipment (PPE’s). Sadly, our campus has failed our nursing students in this regard.
I cannot tell you the number of times I have seen our nursing students, all decked-out in their red scrubs, coming into the busy cafeteria with their masks below their chin, below their nose, or simply not on at all.
It behooves the staff to remind students that they must wear their mask properly. Yet, I have never seen a staff member address a student directly. It seems that their red scrubs grant them a certain level of immunity from the policies on campus.
If anyone should be setting an example on campus of how to protect oneself from this deadly and highly contagious virus, it should be our nursing students. When other students see “medical professionals” walking around campus in crowded areas like the cafeteria without their mask or with it on improperly, they are more likely to disobey the campus policies as well. The example our nursing students are setting is one where anyone can break the rules without consequences. For someone who is immunocompromised this can be deadly!
I am not referring to when students are eating or drinking. You have to remove your mask to preform those tasks. No, I am referring to when you are standing in line for your food or drink or when you are standing around inside the Student Activities Center or any other building talking to friends or family while blocking the path for others to safely move about. These are times when you must wear your mask properly.
As someone who worked through the first wave of COVID-19 as a healthcare Chaplain in a local hospital, I understand the severity and risks associated with COVID-19. I understand the impact it has when we as professionals wear our masks improperly or not at all. This can lead to others relaxing their standards, making USC Aiken a potential hotspot for COVID-19.
If you are failing to wear your mask properly and do so because you believe you are invincible or that COVID-19 is a hoax, feel free to stop and talk to me on campus. Allow me to tell you about the hundreds of people I saw die from COVID-19. Let me explain how heartbroken their families were to not be able to be with their loved one as they died. Let me explain what a COVID-19 patient goes through physically during their last days on earth.
As of Feb. 27, 522,036 people are dead in the United States and 2,524,672 are dead world-wide from the COVID-19 virus. Not to mention the 29,097,344 in the United States and 113,815,820 world-wide infected with the COVID-19 virus. We need to be taking this seriously.
For those who have never been trained, the graphic is from the Voice of America News and the San Francisco Department of Health.
Rev. Fr. Gregory (Greer) Godsey is an Old Catholic Priest who is a Sociology Major at USC Aiken.
