Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe says he is ur­gent­ly gath­er­ing the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion to shed light on why lo­cal nurs­ing stu­dents are fail­ing CXC’s Re­gion­al Ex­am­i­na­tion for Nurse Reg­is­tra­tion (RENR).

On Tues­day, Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art and for­mer nurs­ing lec­tur­er Mau­reen Gid­dings-Es­t­wick re­vealed that stu­dents from this coun­try have the worst grades in the re­gion, with a 50 per cent fail­ing grade over­all. They were both speak­ing at the launch of the Na­tion­al Nurs­es Cred­it Union Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety Ltd.

Re­spond­ing yes­ter­day, Bo­doe said the da­ta is be­ing sought from the of­fice of the Na­tion­al Ad­min­is­tra­tor of Nurs­ing Ser­vices. He said once this is com­plet­ed, a sys­tem­at­ic re­view can be con­duct­ed.

“In so do­ing, and with a firm grasp of the fun­da­men­tal is­sues at play, we can then en­gage with all the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the TTNNA, to de­ter­mine the most ap­pro­pri­ate and sus­tain­able course of ac­tion.”

How­ev­er, the pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Nurs­ing Coun­cil, Corey George, be­lieves the high fail­ure rate among stu­dents is due to the cur­ricu­lum not be­ing aligned with the ex­am.

The coun­cil is the reg­u­la­to­ry body that re­views and ap­proves all the cur­ric­u­la in nurs­ing and mid­wifery pro­grammes in this coun­try.

“The CXC RENR ex­ams are based on do­mains and we found that our nurs­ing cur­ricu­lum in Trinidad and To­ba­go is not aligned to those do­mains,” he said.

Dur­ing a Zoom in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, George said they met with all heads of school nurs­ing on De­cem­ber 13, 2024, to dis­cuss why nurs­ing stu­dents were fail­ing.

In that meet­ing, the pres­i­dent said they pre­sent­ed the da­ta from the last ten years (2014-2024), which he said showed a con­sis­tent de­cline.

“All schools of nurs­ing were asked to re­view their cur­ric­u­la and come in­to align­ment with the do­mains as set by the CXC RENR,” he shared.

George said that cur­rent­ly, both the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies School of Nurs­ing and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean were re­view­ing their cur­ric­u­la. How­ev­er, he said there was a chal­lenge with the COSTAATT School of Nurs­ing, which had yet to re­view its cur­ricu­lum or sub­mit it to the coun­cil for re­view.

“The need for stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of nurs­ing ed­u­ca­tion is para­mount for us in this ju­ris­dic­tion,” he stat­ed.

George said an­oth­er chal­lenge faced by nurs­ing stu­dents was the in­abil­i­ty to bal­ance fam­i­ly life and jobs while en­rolled in full-time pro­grammes.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad, said he was in the process of ob­tain­ing sta­tis­tics and in­for­ma­tion on the poor per­for­mance of nurs­ing stu­dents to de­ter­mine the root cause.

“It would not be wise to draw con­clu­sions from cor­re­la­tions (for ex­am­ple, stipends to fail­ure rates), the caus­es for the fail­ure rates need to be de­ter­mined and re­me­di­al mea­sures need to be im­ple­ment­ed if the prob­lem is to be ad­dressed,” he said.