Nourhan Dahshan: an angel with gloves and a mask

Not all angels have wings, they can have a heart pure as a rain drop, and eyes so sharp like an eagle’s, and hands so light and blessed, they can take away all your pain.  

The soldier who fights in all battles but remains in the shadows, but not any more, for the world can not afford to stay blind to the tremendous role nurses like Nourhan Dahshan play in our lives. 

 Nourhan Dahshan (24 years old) is a graduate of the Faculty of Nursing, Zagazig University, of the class 2020, and is leading a wonderful career of working as a nurse, and as a teaching assistant of nursing.  

Nourhan has always had a passion for biology in school. It was her favourite subject, and she chose it as her path when she came to understand how someone can have a role so essential in other people’s lives. In high school, she has made up her mind to join the Faculty of Medicine, and everyone encouraged her to work hard to achieve that goal, but unfortunately, she didn’t get enough grades to be able to join the faculty. Or was it fortune?! For she found her true passion when she joined the Faculty of Nursing.  

Understanding the vital role nurses have in patients’ healing journeys, Nourhan was hungry for learning and gaining experience; so she can start her own journey in serving humanity. She took several courses to aid and further prepare herself to be an effective nurse. Such as:  

The certificate of Occupational Safety and Health, from the Institute of 

Occupational Safety and Health, which helped her understand the rights and duties of nurses, understand how to improve the whole medical system and process for all affected parties, whether patients, doctors, or nurses, and how members of the medical field should deal with stress and anxiety that accompanies the profession.  

Nourhan also joined a course in Leadership in Interprofessional Informatics, from the University of Minnesota; as she came to realize the importance of technology in the medical field, and she stated that creating a separate file for each patient with all available information on their condition and medical history contribute to saving patients, and saves doctors and nurses a lot of time and effort. 

Another course she has taken was the COVID-19 Contact Tracking For Nursing Professionals, from the University of Houston, and the importance of such a course lies in training nurses and doctors into helping patients through phone calls and text messages, which was practised heavily during COVID-19. 

Once she finished the previously mentioned courses, she felt ready to take it a step further, and crown her scientific knowledge with practical experience. So, she worked as a trainee nurse in Al-Ain Al-garia hospital, and spent her last year in college working at Zagazig University Hospitals, and that happened to be at the peak of COVID-19 in Egypt. 

Working as a nurse during the period COVID-19 was at its peak as a pandemic in Egypt was difficult for her. It felt as if the whole world was shaking uncontrollably, but she and her colleagues had to stay stable and focused, keeping their feelings at bay. Kids as old as 20 years old and adults had to face death every day, and were surrounded by death, blood, screams, and agony, but they still had to keep it at bay and stay calm at all costs for they were the only left hope for humanity to survive, and they were strong enough to drag humanity away from the volcano’s mouth. 

During all this chaos, Nourhan’s soul was burdened and tormented with another source of worry. She feared getting infected with the virus with no symptoms, and infecting her loved ones without noticing. This thought added to her distressed state; as she couldn’t risk letting them hug her or comfort her, after she had been shocked with agony at how people were suffering and dying all around her.  

As a teaching assistant, she teaches her student knowledge and help them acquire some qualities that will help them during their journey, for example: selfconfidence is so important; because they will have to make many decisions and hesitation might put patients in danger, understanding that the essence of their job is to help patients is another important lesson, and a third is to respect the ethics of their profession. 

Nourhan stated that it’s greatly important for members of the medical field to balance their connection to an unwanted but an inevitable visitor – death – and she explained that they need to accept death as natural phenomena and not allow it to be an obstacle on the road, but still respect it and never underestimates its presence.