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| A senior nurse shows how to insert needles into blood vessels, with a new nurse as the subject, during a training session at Daejeon St. Mary's Hospital in this February photo. It was disclosed recently that at some nursing schools students are forced to receive an enema in front of classmates as a guinea pig, raising issues of human rights infringement. / Yonhap |
By Jung Hae-myoung
A human rights violation controversy has emerged after it was found that some nursing schools here force students to act as guinea pigs by receiving an enema in front of classmates.
Act Now Nurse, a group advocating nurses' human rights, said it plans to file a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission of Korea against seven schools for human rights infringement.
The practice became known after a student accused one school of randomly picking one student each from four- to five-member groups to become the "patient of the day" for the enema training.
"One student in each group is picked by drawing lots, and it is the atmosphere that the selected student cannot say no. Having to show my anus to others because of bad luck in the lots… I think this is an issue of human rights, and I wonder if other schools do this too," the student said anonymously in an online community of nurses, Sept. 18.
The "patients of the day" lie on the bed, having to expose their anus in front of their classmates who insert the tube and inject drugs, according to the accuser.
"The picked students feel like crying," the student said in a radio interview. "Showing their private parts to others is humiliating, and other students also don't want to give an enema because they also know how they feel."
Act Now Nurse has received reports that seven schools follow this practice. Korea has 203 universities with nursing schools, and most other schools use manikins for the same practice.
According to the accuser, their professor justified the practice, saying nurses can provide better medical services when they experience the pain of patients.
Choi Won-young, an activist of Act Now Nurse, said there is an enema kit that makes the enema procedure simpler nowadays. "The nurses don't have to go through all the pain in order to sympathize with patients," she said.
"At nursing schools, students do take training and practice on each other for some procedures. But enemas seem unnecessary, especially when it could cause mental and physical trauma to the students by making it public," said Choi who is a nurse with eight years of experience at a Seoul hospital.
It is hard for the selected students to say no, because refusal means their group cannot participate in the training, the accuser said. Also, the students feel reluctant to leave a bad impression by speaking up against the professor because students have to encounter the professor for the rest of their time in college, she added.
"Students in nursing school have a tight schedule that is already fixed from the start of the term. They cannot graduate when they do not engage in the assigned classes and with professors," Choi said.
A majority of students in other nursing schools and medical schools were astonished by the practice, while citizens showed mixed responses.
"Many feel humiliated when showing their anus to nurses even as patients. It is absurd that nursing school students have to just endure the humiliation only because they are nursing school students," a blogger said.
But another agreed with the professor's instruction. "If the students do not practice enema training like this, it means a patient will become their first guinea pig. What patient will want to get an enema from a nurse who has never done it before?" an internet user wrote.
Another internet user wrote: "There are manikins and other tools to practice administering enemas. This is like sexual assault, causing such humiliation. The professor should become a guinea pig him or herself, setting an example for the students."
According to a survey by the Korean Nurses Association and the Ministry of Health and Welfare, nearly 70 percent of the nurses said they have had their rights violated in the workplace.
