Lee An­na Ma­haraj

Re­porter

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, Idi Stu­art, says a new pol­i­cy es­tab­lish­ing a six-to-one pa­tient-to-nurse ra­tio will take ef­fect on April 28.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Stu­art said the ra­tio has been ap­proved but has not yet been im­ple­ment­ed by the Min­is­ter of Health. How­ev­er, the as­so­ci­a­tion plans to im­ple­ment the pol­i­cy it­self.

“Right now, there is a pol­i­cy on the Min­is­ter of Health’s desk called the pa­tient-to-staff ra­tio. It’s some­thing the as­so­ci­a­tion has been call­ing for nu­mer­ous years. Every com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to health­care over the last decade has point­ed out that the is­sue of pa­tient-to-staff ra­tio is one of the sin­gle con­trib­u­tors of in­creas­es in mor­tal­i­ty. What we are in­struct­ing our nurs­ing per­son­nel to do while the Min­is­ter of Health de­lays pub­li­cis­ing and ap­prov­ing that pa­tient-to-staff ra­tio, the nurs­ing as­so­ci­a­tion is go­ing to im­ple­ment the pa­tient-to-staff ra­tio,” Stu­art said.

He urged nurs­es to re­port to the union if they are as­signed more than six pa­tients, adding that mem­bers are ex­pect­ed to com­ply with the di­rec­tive.

“A nurse ought not to be car­ing for more than four pa­tients on a med­ical and sur­gi­cal ward. That’s the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard. We know you were on­ly trained for one to four; we know the nurs­ing coun­cil cov­ers you for one to four. We are ask­ing you to go up to one to six, but when you make the six, a cut-off must be made. Do not see any pa­tients above six. Go­ing for­ward from the 28th April, we are say­ing one reg­is­tered nurse to no more than 6 pa­tients. We at the as­so­ci­a­tion will write up any nurse who com­pro­mis­es pa­tient care go­ing for­ward, and we will re­port you to the nurs­ing coun­cil. Any nurse who sees about more than six pa­tients will be writ­ten up,” he not­ed.

He added, “We will be send­ing out script­ed let­ters where you will just fill out the pa­tient-to-nurse ra­tio and send it in to the nurs­ing su­per­vi­sor, and let the nurs­ing su­per­vi­sor and chair­man find oth­er nurs­es to help. We will no longer com­pro­mise pa­tient care.”

Stu­art said that nurs­es have al­ready re­ceived com­plaints about pa­tient ne­glect due to a poor pa­tient-to-nurse ra­tio.

The as­so­ci­a­tion has been protest­ing over sev­er­al long-stand­ing is­sues, in­clud­ing salary in­creas­es and de­layed talks in ad­dress­ing this is­sue.

Stu­art said the union plans a ma­jor demon­stra­tion in the next two months, sim­i­lar to the April 10 demon­stra­tions; how­ev­er, he not­ed that they ex­pect more sup­port and a larg­er at­ten­dance.

“On this oc­ca­sion, we will be go­ing to the Red House. We want to be present when these pol­i­cy­mak­ers are en­ter­ing par­lia­ment, mak­ing de­ci­sions that are af­fect­ing us,” he said.