JANELLE BERNARD

Pro­duc­er

While there have been some im­prove­ments with­in the nurs­ing pro­fes­sion, many are still dis­sat­is­fied with the pace at which nurs­es are be­ing up­grad­ed to per­ma­nent em­ploy­ees.

Ac­cord­ing to pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTR­NA), Idi Stu­art, some Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs) have so­lid­i­fied the po­si­tions of their nurs­es, but some oth­ers are still em­ploy­ing nurs­es on con­tract.

Added to this, he says, nurs­es have still not re­ceived their out­stand­ing ben­e­fit pay­ments.

“We con­tin­ue to work on 2013 salaries in 2024,” he says.  “Nurs­ing per­son­nel are re­al­ly be­com­ing de­mo­ti­vat­ed and de­ject­ed, and it is lead­ing to this con­tin­u­ing mi­gra­tion.”

The TTR­NA pres­i­dent ob­serves that while some RHA's are man­ag­ing to re­tain a high­er num­ber of nurs­es com­pared to oth­ers, the ben­e­fits of for­eign em­ploy­ment con­tin­ue to lure nurs­es away.

“They are leav­ing in greater num­bers in spe­cif­ic RHAs,” he points out.  “In South-West, NCRHA, and in NWRHA, they are leav­ing much faster than they are leav­ing in ER­HA and TRHA, for some rea­son.”

“It speaks to man­age­ment styles, and to how much they feel ap­pre­ci­at­ed by the em­ploy­er,” the TTR­NA pres­i­dent says. “There is a high­er rate of mi­gra­tion in those three larg­er RHAs com­pared to the two small­er RHAs, but they are def­i­nite­ly leav­ing.”

He says one can­not blame the nurs­es for leav­ing be­cause the terms of em­ploy­ment are bet­ter.

“You can­not get per­ma­nen­cy in your own coun­try, and Eng­land is grant­i­ng per­ma­nent em­ploy­ment with pen­sion plans for nurs­ing per­son­nel as soon as you get there,” he said.

Cab­i­net re­cent­ly ap­proved the trans­fer of the nurs­ing ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes, cur­rent­ly of­fered by the Nurs­ing Ed­u­ca­tion Unit of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to COSTAATT—the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of Trinidad and To­ba­go.