Nurses making a difference: Breipaal Clinic
- /
- / Health, Our Health
Returning to her life purpose later in life has turned into a blessing, not only for Nurse Maria van Bergen, but also for the many lives she touches at the Breipaal Clinic in Douglas, Northern Cape.
The clinic, small and with only two nurses serving the entire community, has issues with critically ill patients having to queue for hours in uncomfortable areas, and so the kindness and patience of Van Bergen, known as “a remarkable” nurse, stands out, say the community.
It was at age 50 when Van Bergen had a strong calling to return to her vocation as a nurse in the healthcare field.
“I had studied nursing in the ’70s at the Free State University and got my honours, but then I got married and undertook to raise my children, leaving the nursing profession. I always knew that I had a real passion for helping sick people,” says Van Bergen.
Even while raising her children, she still found time to volunteer and help in the health field.
“I used to take care of the people who were ill and staying on my farm, I helped out with First Aid Training at the South Africa First Aid League and assisted part-time at Hester Malan Hospital in Douglas.”
In 2002 she decided to return to the University of the Free State and study primary health care.
After she graduated, van Bergen was employed at Breipaal Clinic in 2005. “My sister-in-law, who had just retired from Breipaal Clinic, encouraged me to apply for the nurse vacancy here.”
“I love being a nurse and working with people. It’s exciting meeting so many different people daily,” she tells OurHealth.
“I like to serve the sick. I usually help examine patients, and once diagnosed explain to them why they are so sick. I also give them medication. But before I do I have explain how the medication works, why they should comply with the regime and also how to use the medication.”
Van Bergen said that she enjoys helping patients not only physically but also psychologically. “That really makes me happy. I don’t think I would change my career, because I have found what I love doing.”
One of Van Bergen’s patients at the clinic Rachel Williams says Van Bergen “really knows how to work with people”.
Van Bergen believes that if the youth really want to make South Africa a better place, and if they have a passion for helping the sick, they should consider becoming a nurse.
“You can make a tangible difference in this country,” she says.
Author
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
-
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
-
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
-
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
-
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
Nurses making a difference: Breipaal Clinic
by PolaoK, Health-e News
June 8, 2015