JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Days af­ter the nurs­ing as­so­ci­a­tion met with the board of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA), nurs­es protest­ed out­side the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ence Com­plex yes­ter­day, de­mand­ing an in­crease in staff.

Speak­ing with the me­dia yes­ter­day, the pres­i­dent of the TT Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA), Idi Stu­art, said the as­so­ci­a­tion wants an ad­e­quate nurse-to-pa­tient ra­tio, as one nurse to 24 pa­tients is in­suf­fi­cient. The protest comes af­ter the TTNNA and the NCRHA met on Wednes­day.

“It is clear to us that they be­lieve that one nurse op­er­at­ing on a ward is suf­fi­cient. One nurse op­er­at­ing on a ward to 24 pa­tients would not cause any neg­a­tive events. And their best ide­al is two nurs­es on a ward, two reg­is­tered nurs­es. And that can­not be.”

Wednes­day’s meet­ing came af­ter a pub­lic ex­change be­tween NCRHA chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh and Stu­art over claims of a se­vere nurs­ing short­age at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) in Mt Hope. Stu­art had warned that un­der­staffing was af­fect­ing pa­tient care, prompt­ing Gopeesingh to ac­cuse him of cre­at­ing un­nec­es­sary pan­ic and to urge him to seek di­a­logue in­stead.

Com­ment­ing on yes­ter­day’s protest, Gopeesingh said while the nurs­es were ex­er­cis­ing what they con­sid­er to be their right, he found it strange that the nurs­es for the past ten years nev­er raised the is­sue of man­pow­er short­age.

“I think the protest is un­found­ed, be­cause we have been do­ing every­thing for our nurs­ing staff. As I in­di­cat­ed, 893 nurs­ing po­si­tions are all filled, and we are with­in in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards of nurse-to-pa­tient ra­tio.”

Stu­art said the protest was just the be­gin­ning, as the as­so­ci­a­tion planned to take the NCRHA to court if need­ed to ad­dress staffing and oth­er is­sues.

The protest came a day af­ter the hos­pi­tal went with­out elec­tric­i­ty for hours fol­low­ing a light­ning strike on a pow­er line con­nect­ed to the hos­pi­tal.