So, according to some online news report, a Zimbo nurse was recently sacked from her nursing job in the UK for ill-treating a patient. I am so not surprised.

What I find surprising, instead, is that this nurse expected to export some of our nurses' trademark rudeness to a country where civil rights and 'customer/client is king' philosophy are religiously observed and get away with it.

MaBritish haasi isusu vamungodheerera tichinyarara. Which shouldn't be the case anyway. As patients here or elsewhere of whatever racial persuasion, we really should be treated with some respect and kindness when we appear before nurses in hospitals presenting with some ailments. After all this is a nursing industry - a care kind of occupation if you will.

But kind, caring and polite are hardly the words that come to mind when describing some of our nurses.

So many of our nurses here in Zimbabwe are so rude and unkind to patients who find themselves at their mercy in our hospitals and clinics. Clearly the Florence Nightingale image is not evoked by their attitude and treatment. And they get away with the verbal abuse, the mocking and the shoddy and disdainful treatment they dish out. To hapless and helpless patients no less.

It is very unfortunate that our nurses here are not brought to book for the shoddy treatment. This kind of treatment is so widespread here that patients have even come to expect it. "Manesi anotuka", "Manesi anotsvinya" ("Nurses will scold you or cuss you out") you hear people saying, clearly resigning themselves to that fact as if it is the right thing to do. Well, it is not. It shouldn't be. Relevant authorities should take heed.

Unkindness at any time is hardly palatable, and it is worse when one is in pain and other trauma. The heart of the matter is that, when you are sick and vulnerable is hardly the time for unkindness, sarcasm or mocking. You see a woman in labour facing such acute pain and attending nurses pouring scorn with sarcastic and mocking remarks. Or a patient belaboured with some HIV-related illness on death's door being rebuked and verbally abused. This is akin to kicking someone when they are down.

So anyway, where the nurse in question might have gotten away with it here in Zimbo, she got her day of reckoning when she made some "sarcastic" and "belittling" remarks as well as "insensitive conduct" to a maternity patient at a hospital in Romsford. As we speak, go the media reports, she has lost her job. After being faced with complaints lodged by the aggrieved and traumatised patient and her family the hospital management sacked the nurse who according to the media was referred to the Nursing and Midwifery Council to "probe her competency to practise".

I daresay this is justified, because if a nurse cannot have a "nursing attitude" in a nursing industry then that does take away from the competency of that healthcare practitioner. Some of these harsh and militant attitudes belong in the bush in liberation struggles and wars not in institutions of care. It's a known fact some people end up doing some jobs, not because that is what they want or that is what is compatible with their temperament or personality, but simply because that is what became available after school in a country of limited opportunities.

Though roundly regrettable, patients should not pay for such employee-job mismatch. It's not their fault that you missed your calling! Isn't it enough that patients are already paying an arm and a leg financially for medical services? Should they pay emotionally and psychological too? Care jobs, whether one is doing them because of a calling or mere need to be employed, should be conducted with the gentleness and tenderness they deserve.

This reminds me of a time when some colleagues and I were working on a video on HIV and Aids prevention education. A number of people living with HIV we interviewed, said they faced the most stigma and discrimination from nurses in clinics, hospitals and other centres where they access treatment. Most of these interviewees said the nurses would pass comments - derogatory, belittling and altogether insensitive to the "vari pachirongwa" "vemapiritsi" people. And we talk of observing the Rights of those infected (and yes affected)!

How is this being allowed to happen in centres where access to treatment in stigma free environment is supposed to take place? Who polices the nurses? One would expect nurses, of all people, to be educated on issues of stigma and discrimination, care and treatment.

After all they are part of the first line of 'defence' yet some of them are clearly defeating the whole goal of universal access to treatment. Believe it or not, some people will actually be deterred from seeking treatment and counselling when nurses behave this way.

One can only hope that the experience of the sacked Zimbo nurse will teach some or many of our nurses here in Zimbo a thing or two on the need for kind, respectful and rightsful treatment of patients and the possible consequences of ill-treating them. And may responsible parties please look into the treatment of patients by nurses and bring to book offending 'elements'. Because, honestly, as members of the public who will get sick at one time or another, we should not live in dread of our encounters with nurses.

-Maggie Mzumara is a media, communication and development specialist. She writes this in her personal capacity as social analyst.