Although schools and universities have been closed because of the danger of the coronavirus infection, hundreds of nursing students instead will be sent into practice this coming Monday.
– “Universities with nursing curriculums where there is a strong potential of infection among young people, must stop sending students to practice in hospitals and nursing homes,” says associate professor Jörn Klein at the Department of Nursing and Health Sciences at the University of Southeast Norway to Klassekampen.
On Thursday, the Oslo Met canceled all classes for 2,000 nursing students because of the danger of infection. Yet, on Monday, hundreds of those same students will go in to practice at the country’s hospitals and nursing homes. Klein believes it is morally wrong to send students who until recently have been sitting close together in large classrooms, out to practice among those who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus.
– “It is primarily the health services and those responsible for the patients that must make this decision. This is how I see they should do this and let us know if they believe that the students should go in to practice,” Dean Gro Jamtvedt from the Oslo Met told the newspaper.
Although, no message had been received by Thursday, that the students should not attend practice, Jamtvedt does not rule out that such a message may come.
– “In the situation that we are in, changes, new decisions and messages come in several times a day,” she says.
© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today
On Washington Post, someone was talking about triage – deciding who had the best chance to live and/vs. who was the most valuable and worthy of treatment.
Someone wrote that the young should have priority treatment, making the case that they have more time to contribute in the future … and shouldn’t be robbed of their futures.
I am in basic agreement with this, although Norway needs valuable people like Kåre Willoch and the King and Queen alive absolutely as long as possible.
Britain, by contrast, is trying to bring retired medical personnel back in to help with the epidemic … which it is to some extent allowing with its libertarian Social Darwinian “herd immunity” policy … to spare or at least help younger health staff.
Most of the nursing students are young women whom Norway badly needs to be citizens and mothers. Norway seems to be losing too many of its young native-born women to the ethnic gangs and mafiyas as it is.
I think exposing young nursing students – even if being young gives them some advantage against the virus – to the worst cases of this virus, is bad, mistaken policy, and I hope it is re-considered before it is too late.