Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

The Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to tack­le crit­i­cal staff short­ages in the pub­lic health­care sys­tem, with a par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on boost­ing nurs­ing num­bers and im­prov­ing pro­fes­sion­al out­comes.

On Fri­day, Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe an­nounced that ef­forts are un­der­way to fill 1,868 nurs­ing va­can­cies across Trinidad’s Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs).

Speak­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) School of Nurs­ing grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny at the Cou­va Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty in Preysal, Dr Bo­doe out­lined the staffing short­falls: 625 at the North West RHA (NWRHA), 143 at the North Cen­tral RHA (NCRHA), 719 at the South West RHA (SWRHA), and 381 at the East­ern RHA (ER­HA).

He said the Min­istry of Health would seek fund­ing in the up­com­ing na­tion­al bud­get to be­gin fill­ing these va­can­cies.

“I am pleased to an­nounce that the NWRHA has em­ployed 97 nurs­es and 59 ENAs, it is al­ready hap­pen­ing. At one of the RHAs 69 nurs­es have al­ready as­sumed du­ties,” Dr Bo­doe stat­ed.

How­ev­er, while re­cruit­ment ef­forts are un­der­way, the min­is­ter raised alarm over the high fail­ure rate in the Re­gion­al Ex­am­i­na­tion for Nurse Reg­is­tra­tion (RENR). In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, he re­ferred to a re­cent ob­ser­va­tion by the pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) high­light­ing that near­ly 50 per cent of can­di­dates are fail­ing the ex­am.

“If this sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ues, then many of the grad­u­ates from lo­cal nurs­ing schools may not get reg­is­tra­tion to prac­tise,” Dr Bo­doe said. “As the Min­is­ter of Health, I be­lieve this is an un­ac­cept­able sit­u­a­tion. In that re­gard, I am await­ing a re­sponse from the rel­e­vant nurs­ing bod­ies—the Nurs­ing Coun­cil and the TTNA—on what hur­dles need to be over­come to fix this, so that all of our nurs­es who grad­u­ate will be able to get their reg­is­tra­tion and do what they are be­ing ed­u­cat­ed and trained to do.”

The RENR is a key reg­is­tra­tion re­quire­ment for en­try-lev­el nurs­es and en­sures they are com­pe­tent to prac­tise. With­out pass­ing it, grad­u­ates are un­able to be recog­nised as Reg­is­tered Nurs­es (RNs).

Dr Bo­doe re­vealed that he met with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion on May 20 and the Nurs­ing Coun­cil of Trinidad and To­ba­go on May 26. Both or­gan­i­sa­tions are cur­rent­ly re­view­ing the Nurs­ing Per­son­nel Act and are prepar­ing a joint list of pro­posed amend­ments for his con­sid­er­a­tion.

In ad­di­tion to re­cruit­ment and leg­isla­tive re­view, the Min­istry of Health has start­ed pre­lim­i­nary talks with the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing to ex­pand spe­cial­ist nurs­ing pro­grammes. This in­cludes tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tions to help re­duce the high RENR fail­ure rate.

“We are com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that our nurs­es are ad­e­quate­ly trained and sup­port­ed,” Dr Bo­doe added. “The goal is to re­duce the fail­ure rate and en­sure all grad­u­ates are able to reg­is­ter and prac­tise ef­fec­tive­ly.”