Some wise soul once said that nursing is the glue that holds the healthcare sector together. There is no questioning this wisdom; nurses are indeed key to a nation’s health. Regardless of how many wonderful policies are put in place, the absence of nurses would result in chaos, making the system unstable and ultimately precipitating its collapse.
It is unfortunate, therefore, that Guyana has not been nurturing this adhesion, a travesty that has been burgeoning for decades and needs to be fixed. The latest indicators of this were the abysmal lack of attention by the powers that be to International Nurses Day, which was observed on May 12, particularly given nurses’ yeoman service in the face of COVID-19, and the brouhaha over the suspension of two programmes at the Charles Roza Nursing School in Linden.
The first issue was particularly glaring given that the World
Health Organisation publicly honoured nurses worldwide by announcing that International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife thus declared in 2020 was being extended to 2021, “because of the impact of the pandemic and the increased visibility of nurses’ contributions”. The second issue, now a political football with racial overtones, owes its current status to whomever wrote the nauseating Ministry of Health press release which sought to explain the reason for the suspension of the programmes, but primarily with Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony because the buck stops with him.
According to the ministry’s statement, the school has been accepting too many applicants from Region Ten (Upper Demerara-Upper Ber-bice) and not enough from other regions who should have access to its facilities to be similarly trained. This was in reference to Region One (Barima-Waini), Region Seven (Cuyuni-Maza-runi), Region Eight (Potaro-Siparuni) and Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo). The release said the ministry intends to “balance the intake” obviously by prorating the students by region before restarting the programmes. Unfor-tunately, this diktat ignores the fact that 67 students had already been accepted and may have begun preparing to enter the school.
To bolster the reasoning behind this interference, the media release pointed out that Region Ten already had, “an excess of 233 registered nurses and 106 registered nursing assistants”, while all other regions had deficits. This is extremely peculiar, because the obvious correction of this anomaly would be to transfer those excess nurses to the other regions where they are needed. The mere idea of nurses sitting on their hands in Region Ten while other regions are stretched for staff and the authorities doing absolutely nothing about it boggles the mind. One imagines too that these excess Region Ten nurses have to be unemployed if the region is already saturated. Surely, they will go where work is available?
A point to note here is that in 2016, the previous administration had announced plans to expand the Charles Roza School of Nursing in order to better accommodate students from hinterland areas. This is in addition to an earlier expansion that was done in 2010. Some $35 million had been earmarked for the new work scheduled to begin in 2017. Has this expansion been completed? If not, does the Ministry of Health plan on seeing it to fruition?
Further, the New Amsterdam School of Nursing had been expanded in 2015, and in 2019 spanking new quarters for trainee nurses were commissioned. In addition, also in 2019, the Georgetown School of Nursing opened its second annex in order to cater for more students.
Traditionally, nursing students from the hinterland regions have been accommodated at the Charles Roza school, but is this arrangement somehow cast in cement? Is there a reason why some of them cannot be accommodated at the schools in Georgetown or New Amsterdam where they would still need to be accommodated in hostels or student quarters?
It is worth noting here that this is not the first time a local nursing school’s programmes have been suspended. However, this is the first time that such a counterintuitive reason, which lends to claims of discrimination and portends racial disharmony, was given for said suspension. In 2004, under then health minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy, there was no intake at the Georgetown School of Nursing because the student to lecturer and student to space ratios were untenable. Although the problems were not rectified by the next year, the school began taking in students again.
Another confounding tidbit from the Ministry of Health statement was the assertion that “Many of the regions with deficit staff have identified eligible students for training”. Does this mean the regions decide which young people are going to be nurses? Based on what? Nursing is a profession, but more importantly, it is a vocation. A young person can be eligible to be trained as a nurse based on academic qualifications, but be quite unsuitable for the profession because of a lack of empathy.
Today’s successful nurse is an individual who possesses compassion, patience, the aptitude and willingness to learn, leadership skills, and dedication to the profession, in addition to being observant and flexible. Nursing is not a profession that should be entered into lightly, or simply to fill quotas for one’s region. A disinterested or uncompassionate nurse is a patient’s worst nightmare. The fallout from pushing young people into places where they do not belong can be dire and it is part of the problem confronting this country at the moment.
Rather than dictating who should fill the places in nursing schools, the government should be doing all it can to accommodate all students who are interested by expanding programmes where necessary. It also needs to look at the quality of the education being imparted to students in these schools. Lest we forget, only 23 of the 179 students who wrote the Professional Nurses State Final Examination in 2016 passed all five of the requisite papers. This is where the Ministry of Health’s focus should lie. This is a problem that requires a permanent and proper solution or the entire structure is likely to become unglued.
