Nunavut nurses must be adaptable: nurses group

It’s not an easy job to be a nurse, but Nancy Mike, a third-year nursing student at Nunavut Arctic College, says she’s up for the challenge. (PHOTO BY SAMANTHA DAWSON)

Nursing can be a thankless and underappreciated job, says Angela Luciana, the president of the Registered Nurses Association of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

And it’s particularly difficult for nurses who want to stay in Nunavut if they’re not from the North.

That means their success depends on how adaptable they are, Luciana said.

While working as a nurse always puts a lot of weight on someone’s shoulders, “especially in the territory, nurses are the first point of contact [with the health system] and sometimes the only point of contact,” she said.

This means that if you’re a nurse in a two-nurse nursing station, you have “a huge responsibility, you deal with whatever comes through the door. You need to have that trust for people to be honest with you.”

Despite the challenges and the abuse that nurses can sometimes face as they try to earn that trust, Nancy Mike of Pangnirtung said she’ll be up to the challenge of nursing after she graduates.

“I would do anything to be connected to the people, and the community, and the families so that abuse was minimized,” said Mike, 24, now in her third year of the nursing program at Nunavut Arctic College.

Nurses in the territory who don’t come from Nunavut originally should make an effort to get to know the community where the work, Mike suggested.

“Getting to know the community or getting to know a little bit about the culture can influence the way you care for your patients,” she said.

Meeting families, sharing traditional feasts, going to the elders’ center or doing “any little thing that you may benefit from in Inuit culture so that you use that knowledge in nursing when you are caring for patients” can also help.

Mike’s plans for the future include working as a nurse in Pangnirtung.

“I will definitely move back to Pang. That’s my home, and that’s where I want to be when I’m done school,” she said.“I like the idea of staying in one community and getting to know the people there and building on that, rather than traveling around and doing little things here and there.”

Nunavut Arctic College has offered a nursing program in Iqaluit for 10 years. So far this program has produced 24 graduates, of whom half are Inuit beneficiaries.

To reduce the high drop-out rates among many who enter the program, the college now plans to offer pre-nursing courses in math, science and English next fall.

During National Nurses Week, which started May 6 and runs until May 12, several activities are planned in Iqaluit:

• a talk at the Nunavut Research Institute on May 8 at 7:30 p.m. called “Doubleculturedness: The Importance of Celebrating Inuit Nurses and Nursing Students and Using their knowledge and Experience in Education and Health” by Lakehead University professor Helle Moeller; and

• a blood pressure clinic at Northmart on May 11.