You think your patient ratio is bad? Try being one of 19 nurses working in the nation’s only cancer hospital serving 12 million people. For a handful of Zambian nurses, this is reality.

Biemba Maliti details the challenges of oncology nursing in the recent quarterly newsletter (see page 4) of the International Society of Nurses in Cancer Care, or ISNCC. It is a fascinating article and worthy of your time. I have had the opportunity to speak with African nurses, and I am amazed by their stories and how very similarly different our oncology nursing profession is around the world. 

The article points out that only five of the nurses are “trained oncology nurses,” which I am guessing means they have a certification of some sort. What a tremendous responsibility, caring for so many people with such limited necessary resources like palliative care services and personal protective equipment for chemotherapy administration that I often take for granted. Our “basics” are very different, indeed.

I don’t think I’ll ever have another conversation about nurse-patient ratios without thinking of my Zambian colleagues.