Alethea Plummer’s costly, lonely burden of care

Alethea Plummer noticed the severity of her patient’s ulcers, and her will as a nurse intensified. She monitored and dressed wounds twice daily and patients recovered quickly. A high patient-recovery rate is common at the Hyacinth Lightbourne Visiting Nursing Service because of Nursing Superintendent Plummer and her staff.

Plummer, after 15 years at the Comprehensive Health Clinic, requested four days of departmental leave that would change the course of her life for good.

On her way home, she stopped by a friend and saw the then superintendent of Hyacinth Lightbourne Nursing Services driving into the neighbour’s driveway. Plummer greeted her and enquired about job vacancies.

A full-time position was available, and Plummer applied.

She began working at Hyacinth Lightbourne Visiting Nursing Service in January of 1990 and cared for shut-ins in the districts surrounding Spanish Town and Kingston and St Andrew as a district nurse from 1992 to 2007.

It was then that tragedy struck the facility with the deaths of a deputy and nursing superintendent, leaving senior posts to be filled.

Plummer filled one of those posts, leaving the district nursing gig to take on the in-office responsibilities of Nursing Superintendent in 2007.

“By then I had some familiarity with the office because I used to relieve the deputy. I had to come into office full time and save this organisation because it was on its knees. It was in a terrible state,” Plummer said.

She continues to make considerable strides to sustain the Hyacinth Lightbourne Visiting Nursing Service despite setbacks.

The nursing home depends heavily on word of mouth to stay relevant. But there is very little publicity to help it along.

“There was an arrangement. While training at the University Hospital, the doctor who welcomes the medical students would inform them about this intermediary service. It’s the same for KPH. When the patients are ready for discharge, doctors would refer us. But that is no longer in place,” she told Women of Distinction.

By gathering adequate information and considering her patients’ design concepts, Plummer produced pamphlets to advertise the services of the nursing home. Though she doesn’t have the resources to print a tonne, Plummer was happy with the outcome and hopes to print more in time.

The establishment has an eight-bed unit downstairs (called the Josephine Glasspole Convalescent Centre), but it can only accommodate seven (7) patients “because of how the beds are,'' she noted.

Plummer sought help from the largest charity organisation in Jamaica, Food for the Poor, to construct a caretaker’s quarters and adult daycare. The expansion should allow for 15 more beds.

Plummer has resorted to fundraisers in the past to compensate for diminishing working capital.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, two patients have been admitted to the facility. This moved the number of patients living at the convalescing centre to six. Though patients pay a fee for the nursing services and the facility receives a monthly subvention from the government, it’s not enough to cover expenses.

More than anything, Plummer wants the nursing home to survive and thrive in and outside of Kingston & St Andrew. But a shortage of nursing staff poses a major threat.

Currently, there are only three nurses employed at the nursing home. One nurse sees to the district and two alternate in-house. Though she makes do with one nurse at any given time, she questions the migration of local nurses.

“I can't find full-time nurses. I have to be using part-time nurses. Our nurses are gone because you have 500 nurses leaving a little country like this in a matter of six months. How do we cope?” asked Plummer.

“We had an office in Montego Bay- we had to close that. We had an office in Mandeville and we had to close because we lacked nursing staff.”

Plummer was trained as a psychiatrist at the Bellevue Hospital. At 23-years-old, she went off to England and attended Bexley Mental Hospital and The Brook General Hospital simultaneously for general and psychiatric training. 

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