‘This OD is for all of us’

When Carmen Lyn Johnson strolls across the stage at King’s House on National Heroes Day next Monday to be conferred with membership in the Order of Distinction (OD) for her service in the field of nursing, the award will not only be for her 33 years in the profession. Nor will it just be for the three years she served as president of the Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ) during that period. It will also be accepted as a tribute to every hard-working nurse in Jamaica.

“I am humbled by the acknowledgment. I see it as an award not just for me, but for those individuals who I’ve been working with over the years and who recognise that there is something more to me that I can give and have always been pushing me into different areas to serve. And so I see it as an award for everyone, not just for me, because if I should question myself, I can’t find a reason why. Maybe I’m deserving of it, but it is because of all those who have come together to make me the individual and to make my outputs what they have been,” Johnson told The Gleaner on Tuesday while at work at the St Ann’s Bay Regional Hospital.

Johnson told The Gleaner in a 2017 interview, after being installed as NAJ president, that nursing was something the Lord chose her to do. Though she had originally wanted to study sociology, she said she had become passionate about her job as a nurse, marking 33 years in the profession come November 12.

She served as NAJ president for three successive terms, from October 2017 to October 2020, and described the period as “three good years” that were filled with “hard work”.

Her tenure covered the emergence of COVID-19, with the period turning out to be very challenging, especially for nurses who were at the forefront of efforts to deal with the cases. Several nurses contracted and died from the disease.

“In my last year was when COVID-19 came out, and there were challenges: persons didn’t want to take our nurses to work, nurses getting COVID. One of the good things, though, was that all players were willing, and we were able to work together to stabilise the ship. We had some deaths, but were able to minimise it,” she said.

“We managed. It was difficult, but maybe it was the right time for me to be there, and I was called for such a time as this, so I take it in good stead and see it as the divine purpose at work.”

Humility walks with Carmen Johnson every step of the way and being conferred with membership in the OD isn’t a celebratory occasion for her.

“For me, I don’t see it as a celebration, I see it as something that makes me even humbler, understanding that I am a servant who is called to serve, and so I must serve even better than I have been serving because I must be true to the award,” she explained.

Johnson was planning to simply have lunch with her family to mark the milestone, but her colleagues at St Ann’s Bay will not settle for that and are said to be planning a luncheon to formally mark the occasion.

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