KE­JAN HAYNES

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA), Idi Stu­art, says nurs­es will still gath­er to­mor­row at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, but not in protest, af­ter a meet­ing with the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) end­ed with on­ly par­tial progress on their con­cerns.

“Yes, we will be gath­er­ing but not protest­ing,” Stu­art told Guardian Me­dia af­ter the meet­ing yes­ter­day. “We agreed on a few things, yes, but the main is­sue was not re­solved.”

The meet­ing was part of on­go­ing talks be­tween the NCRHA, the TTNNA, and the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) to ad­dress nurs­ing-re­lat­ed is­sues and de­vel­op a struc­tured plan to deal with op­er­a­tional chal­lenges. The NCRHA said its new Board of Di­rec­tors, in of­fice for eight weeks, re­mains com­mit­ted to di­a­logue and im­prov­ing ser­vice de­liv­ery across all its fa­cil­i­ties.

Ear­li­er on The Morn­ing Brew, Stu­art crit­i­cised the NCRHA for deny­ing re­ports of staff short­ages, call­ing it “mind-bog­gling” and “un­ac­cept­able”, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en what he said was over­whelm­ing ev­i­dence across oth­er Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties.

“Every oth­er RHA ad­mits that they are short-staffed,” Stu­art said. “The num­ber one RHA that is crit­i­cal­ly short-staffed and ought not to be de­fend­ing that they are prop­er­ly staffed is the NCRHA.”

He said even Health Min­is­ter Dr Lakram Bo­doe had ac­knowl­edged a na­tion­al short­age of more than 1,600 nurs­es, though the as­so­ci­a­tion’s own es­ti­mate is high­er. Stu­art added that mul­ti­ple of­fi­cial re­ports and com­mis­sions of in­quiry, in­clud­ing the Gladys Gaffor re­port and the re­cent PA­HO re­view in­to neona­tal deaths, all iden­ti­fied a lack of nurs­ing staff as a key fac­tor in pa­tient out­comes.

Stu­art al­so crit­i­cised the NCRHA’s own press re­lease, which he said ef­fec­tive­ly con­firmed that wards at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex were op­er­at­ing with on­ly one nurse per shift for up to 34 pa­tients.

“Imag­ine that—an au­thor­i­ty ad­mit­ting on pa­per that four wards were staffed by one nurse,” he said. “And worse, say­ing that can­not be at­trib­uted to a re­duc­tion in the qual­i­ty of care. In­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards call for one reg­is­tered nurse to four or five pa­tients, yet they think one nurse can han­dle 24.”

Fol­low­ing yes­ter­day’s meet­ing, Guardian Me­dia called NCRHA chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh, who con­firmed that dis­cus­sions with the TTNNA had just con­clud­ed and that a sep­a­rate meet­ing with the PSA was un­der­way. How­ev­er, he was not part of the meet­ing.

Dr Gopeesingh said the NCRHA cur­rent­ly has 893 staffed nurs­ing po­si­tions, all filled, and re­cent­ly ad­ver­tised more than 300 va­can­cies for en­rolled nurs­ing as­sis­tants to strength­en front­line ca­pac­i­ty. So far, 34 qual­i­fied ap­pli­cants have been in­ter­viewed, with re­cruit­ment con­tin­u­ing.

The au­thor­i­ty is al­so pro­mot­ing about 40 act­ing head nurs­es to reg­u­larise long-stand­ing ap­point­ments and pro­vide cov­er­age dur­ing pe­ri­ods of high pa­tient de­mand.