Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment has hired on con­tract a to­tal of 1,329 ad­di­tion­al work­ers– in­clud­ing doc­tors and nurs­es– in the pub­lic health care sys­tem specif­i­cal­ly to meet the de­mands of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, ac­cord­ing to Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

Deyals­ingh gave the in­for­ma­tion in the Sen­ate on Wednes­day re­ply­ing to UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark’s query. Mark had asked if Gov­ern­ment would re­cruit ad­di­tion­al health­care work­ers fol­low­ing the No­vem­ber 2021 protest by a South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) Ward Man­ag­er to high­light work­ers’ fa­tigue and frus­tra­tion.

Deyals­ingh said to ad­dress the need for ad­di­tion­al staff, dur­ing the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 2020 to De­cem­ber 2021, the cat­e­gories and num­bers of health work­ers were hired by the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs) to as­sist dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

He list­ed:

Doc­tors- 387 (House Of­fi­cers 342; Spe­cial­ist Med­ical Of­fi­cers 25; and Reg­is­trars 20.

• Nurs­es-443 (Reg­is­tered Nurs­es 293 and En­rolled Nurs­ing As­sis­tants 150.

• Med­ical Lab­o­ra­to­ry Tech­ni­cians–33

• Hos­pi­tal At­ten­dants–98;

• Pa­tient Care As­sis­tants–109

• Pa­tient Es­corts–32

• Con­sumer Ser­vice Rep­re­sen­ta­tives–23

• Med­ical Or­der­ly–30

• Wards maid–42;

• Clerk 1–96

• Clean­ers–36.

Deyals­ingh added, “This amounts to a to­tal of 1,329 ad­di­tion­al work­ers hired in our pub­lic health care sys­tem, specif­i­cal­ly to meet the de­mands of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.”

He said these po­si­tions are main­ly for the SWRHA and North Cen­tral RHA which bore the brunt of the COVID re­sponse. Small­er amounts are al­so in the East­ern RHA and North West RHA. Con­tracts vary in terms from three months up­wards.

Deyals­ingh al­so said, “Fur­ther, the Health Min­istry and the RHAs re­main cog­nisant of staff fa­tigue through­out this pan­dem­ic and has im­ple­ment­ed var­i­ous strate­gies to as­sist staff with cop­ing and men­tal health is­sues.”

These in­clude staff ro­ta­tion; use of the Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme; use of the men­tal health tele-con­sults and one on one coun­selling with of­fi­cers; and sen­si­ti­sa­tion ses­sions with front line staff in psy­cho­log­i­cal first aid and main­tain­ing men­tal well-be­ing.

On an­oth­er query, Deyals­ingh al­so said no terms/con­di­tions of SWRHA work­ers were al­tered.