Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A Unit­ed States-trained nurse has lost her law­suit chal­leng­ing the re­fusal of the Nurs­ing Coun­cil of Trinidad and To­ba­go to reg­is­ter her lo­cal­ly.

High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad dis­missed the claim brought by Mikali Hamel-Smith, find­ing that the coun­cil’s de­ci­sion could not be fault­ed.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad ruled that the coun­cil act­ed with­in its dis­cre­tion and in ac­cor­dance with the law.

“In the court’s re­spect­ful view, the de­ci­sion made by the de­fen­dant to refuse reg­is­tra­tion to the claimant was not un­rea­son­able, ir­reg­u­lar and/or an im­prop­er ex­er­cise of its dis­cre­tion and, in­stead, that de­ci­sion was one that was open to it based on the ev­i­dence be­fore it,” he said.

“The court can­not, there­fore, man­date the de­fen­dant to re­con­sid­er its de­ci­sion, as it is of the view that it took in­to ac­count rel­e­vant con­sid­er­a­tions when de­cid­ing whether to reg­is­ter the claimant,” he added.

Hamel-Smith ap­plied for lo­cal reg­is­tra­tion af­ter com­plet­ing an As­so­ciate of Sci­ence de­gree at Keis­er Uni­ver­si­ty in Flori­da, pass­ing an ex­am­i­na­tion and ob­tain­ing a Flori­da nurs­ing li­cence.

She re­lied on a de­ci­sion by the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ACTT), which recog­nised both her uni­ver­si­ty and the pro­gramme she com­plet­ed.

How­ev­er, the Nurs­ing Coun­cil de­nied her ap­pli­ca­tion, not­ing that her pro­gramme was com­plet­ed in ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 months, com­pared to the three-year train­ing re­quire­ment for lo­cal­ly trained nurs­es.

In as­sess­ing the case, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad ex­am­ined the pro­vi­sions of the Nurs­ing Per­son­nel Act gov­ern­ing the reg­is­tra­tion of nurs­es.

The leg­is­la­tion re­quires ap­pli­cants to com­plete train­ing at an ACTT-recog­nised in­sti­tu­tion, pass an ex­am­i­na­tion pre­scribed by the coun­cil or ad­min­is­tered by a recog­nised nurs­ing body, and demon­strate the men­tal and phys­i­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ty to per­form the role sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly.

While the judge not­ed that the ACTT recog­nised Hamel-Smith’s uni­ver­si­ty, he point­ed out that it did not cer­ti­fy the ex­am­i­na­tion she passed for li­cen­sure in Flori­da.

“Ac­cord­ing­ly, in this court’s re­spect­ful view, ACTT recog­ni­tion of the claimant’s pro­gramme sat­is­fies the train­ing limb and does not usurp the de­fen­dant’s statu­to­ry role on the re­main­ing limbs in sec­tion 16(2),” he said.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad al­so held that the court could not usurp the coun­cil’s role in de­ter­min­ing the ap­plic­a­bil­i­ty of the ex­am­i­na­tion, not­ing that the coun­cil’s com­po­si­tion made it best suit­ed to as­sess such mat­ters.

“This com­po­si­tion re­flects Par­lia­ment’s in­ten­tion that stan­dards for en­try to prac­tice be set and ap­plied by a body with both pro­fes­sion­al ex­per­tise and pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty, which re­in­forces the def­er­ence owed to the coun­cil when it ap­plies the statu­to­ry tests ac­cord­ing to law,” he said.

He fur­ther found that the coun­cil was en­ti­tled to con­sid­er the du­ra­tion of Hamel-Smith’s stud­ies in as­sess­ing her com­pe­tence.

“The de­fen­dant was en­ti­tled to as­sess men­tal and phys­i­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ty by ref­er­ence to the na­ture and con­ti­nu­ity of the claimant’s prepa­ra­tion and to use the lo­cal frame­work as an ob­jec­tive bench­mark for readi­ness,” he said.

“Hav­ing re­gard to the undis­put­ed du­ra­tion of the claimant’s pro­gramme and to the bench­marks ap­plied, the con­clu­sion that the claimant had not demon­strat­ed ca­pa­bil­i­ty was open to the de­fen­dant on the ma­te­ri­als,” he added.

Hamel-Smith was rep­re­sent­ed by Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith, while at­tor­ney Niru­pa Rai ap­peared for the coun­cil.