culture

An Kyong Sil, head nurse of the obstetrical and gynecological department of the Unchon County Hospital in South Hwanghae Province, has taken good care of patients for decades.

It is not an easy job to nurse even a single patient in a family. Still it is more difficult for a nurse to look after many patients almost every day all her life.

Her motto of life

It happened when Kyong Sil began to work as a nurse at the hospital 39 years ago.

One day a girl was rushed to the hospital as she was seriously injured. Medical workers vyingly hurried to the emergency room as soon as she was carried into it.

Kyong Sil was deeply impressed to see them readily donate their blood and skin for the patient, she recalls. This made her keenly realize how the boy Pang Ha Su, who had got the third-degree burns over 48 percent of the body, was miraculously rescued in the Chollima era of the 1960s.

Bearing in mind the Chollima era ethics of regarding it as commonplace to help others and sacrifice oneself for others, Kyong Sil unhesitatingly volunteered to donate hers for the patient.

I will also live like the medical workers in the Chollima era, she thought. Her determination that day became her motto of life.

That is why even when she was near 60, she did not hesitate to become the first to donate her blood for a case in a critical condition.

When a senior official of the Unchon County Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, referring to her deed, said that a person who donated so much blood for others in peaceful days is as good as a hero, she said, “If I devote myself to saving a patient, he or she will give the country help. I take pride and happiness in restoring patients, so I further love my job as a nurse.”

Kindling flame of devoted service movement

One spring day of last year there was the third skin grafting on a patient with a serious burn. During the first and second grafting, Kyong Sil already donated her skin before anyone else. That day, too, she was the first to enter the operating room.

This time surgeons earnestly dissuaded her from donating her skin again but in vain as she had never hesitated since her girlhood to donate her blood and skin for patients.

Though at the pension age, she was always the first to donate her skin. Moreover, she never got up from the operating table before having her skin cut over two times more than others. This inspired all girl nurses to offer theirs too.

She was always the first to throw herself into the most difficult job, which served as a model for the collective and kindled the enthusiasm for devotion of new-generation medical workers. 

She did not merely dedicate herself to patients alone.

Her devotion to the collective and her comrades just kindled the flame of devoted service movement, entailing the continuous display of fine traits throughout the hospital.

It was when a department was giving a patient first aid treatment. The patient was in a serious condition but his veins could never be found as he had bled too badly.

Aware of the fact, the head nurse, who had been ill at home, appeared in the emergency room and needled at once a point of his body no one else thought of.

Looking at the young nurses who were struck by her masterly skill, she thought it was also her duty to train them into fine medical workers.

Inject yourself first before injecting patients to feel the pain yourself and only then will you try to devote yourself and improve your ability, she always said to the nurses, and made exact demand on them so that they got into the habit of observing technical and other standard regulations in medical service activities. She even had each of the nurses inject her so as to help them rectify every mistake of theirs. 

Her department leads others in both medical treatment and the devoted service movement at the hospital. 

At the forefront of the movement, she scrupulously looked after the family affairs of other members of the department like their own mother or elder sister. The sincerity with which she shared joy and sorrow with them helped the department turn into a united and harmonious collective overflowing with virtue and affections.

Whenever she saw a sick person, she voluntarily became a nurse for the patient though he or she was not a case of the department.

Pak Kyong Suk, a doctor who has worked with her for decades, said, “Head nurse An Kyong Sil is like a person born for the good of others. We all want to follow her example.”

The state put her forward as a model in the devoted service movement in recognition of the fact that she, in the spirit of devoted service for the people, has donated her blood and skin for many patients, trained new-generation nurses into fine ones and performed numerous patriotic deeds for society, collective and the country over the past 39 years.

Last year she was awarded the title of Merited Nurse and participated in the celebrations of the 74th anniversary of the DPRK to have a photo taken with General Secretary Kim Jong Un. This year she was invited as one of the special delegates to the celebrations of the birthday of the Korean People’s Army and received his loving care and benevolence to be conveyed generation after generation.