SAM-OUEN MOM – SURGICAL WARD SUPERVISING NURSE
Training the next generation of medical staff is at the heart of SHCH’s mission. Sam-Ouen Mom is the supervising training nurse in the surgical ward. She is responsible to train and educate the nurses in her unit. Her story is below:
Born and educated before the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975, Sam-Oeun is one of few educated Cambodian nurses who survived the Khmer Rouge years. For nearly four years, Sam-Oeun had to keep quiet about the formal education she received before the Khmer Rouge simply to survive.
Telling of the Khmer Rouge days, Sam-Oeun said she walked for 180 kilometers from Phnom Penh to the countryside and on this walk she saw educated people shackled together and held captive by Khmer Rouge soldiers. She knew very early on disclosing her educational achievements were never to be done during this time.
For nearly four years, Sam-Ouen endured forced labor under the Khmer Rouge. In her commune, a professor and his family also lived and performed the forced labor with her fellow commune workers. However, upon the knowledge of his educational status, he and his family of six were taken away and killed.
By the fall of the Khmer Rouge nearly four years later, nearly starving, Sam-Ouen and her family walked over 120 kilometers to her family’s land outside of Phnom Penh. Every day they would wake up at 5am and begin walking the journey back home. To pay for food, they would slice up piece of gold, from necklaces or earrings, and barter for any chickens or rice that may have been available via the roadside.
By 1982, Sam-Oeun was able to restart her nursing career by joining a nursing staff at an orphanage in Kandal province. Because money had been abolished during the Khmer Rouge years, rice was the currency in which she was paid for several years before money became reintroduced in Cambodia. Working there for 8 years, she joined an NGO, Handicap International, as a nurse from 1990-1997.
Having heard about the training opportunities at SHCH from a relative, she joined SHCH staff in 1997. “SHCH is known throughout Cambodia for its good care. It has a reputation for curing people and for dispensing high-quality and safe drugs,” said Sam-Ouen. “We help poor people. If they come in a critical condition, we really take care of them.”
Her first two years at SHCH were in the medical ward as a regular nurse. Through promotion, Sam-Oeun now serves as the supervising nurse in the surgical ward. As the supervising nurse, she is responsible to assist new nurses with any procedures they may be unfamiliar with and she must supervise the quality and care her nursing team provides the patients. She supervises the education and training of all nurses in her department and is a major player in the hospital’s mission to train the next generation of Cambodian medical professionals.
Sam-Ouen tells of this hospital, "This hospital is very special because it trains us to know more skills in the nursing field. There really are no other hospitals in Cambodia that offer as comprehensive training to nurses as is available at SHCH. We continually train new nurses, those of whom who have just graduated and even older nurses who previously have never been trained outside of school. Every year, the medical knowledge of every nurse is checked and tested by an American nurse who comes for two weeks to train and educate us.”
When asked what it is she would like to change about SHCH, Sam-Ouen said, “If I was to change anything, I would add more beds to care for the growing need from Cambodia’s poor that need medical care. Also, I would want even more training for the nursing staff, more space to expand the hospital, more patients, and more staff.”
Finally Sam-Ouen said, “I hope Cambodia can have more training from foreigners in the medical field. I am very grateful to this hospital for providing us with training in English and in the nursing field. I think this hospital is a special place that helps not only the poor, but its staff too.”
Sam-Ouen lives in Phnom Penh with her husband of ten years, a Belgian. She has a 29 year old son who also lives in Phnom Penh. Thank you Sam-Ouen for your contribution to Cambodia’s poor and for your training of Cambodia’s future nurses.
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