Carisa Lee

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTR­NA) Idi Stu­art be­lieves re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties (RHA) are pro­vid­ing in­cor­rect sta­tis­tics to Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyalaingh. He said there is in­deed an ex­o­dus of nurs­es from this coun­try.

On Sun­day, when he was asked about re­ports of a mass mi­gra­tion of nurs­es, Deyals­ingh said: “That is not cor­rect. Every time that ques­tion comes up and we pro­duce the num­bers, the num­bers don’t sup­port any mass mi­gra­tion of nurs­es. It doesn’t.”

In De­cem­ber, the min­is­ter al­so re­port­ed an in­crease in nurs­ing staff in the na­tion­al health­care sys­tem. How­ev­er, Stu­art is chal­leng­ing that claim as he said most lo­cal nurs­es are tem­porar­i­ly em­ployed and are not re­quired to of­fi­cial­ly re­sign. On­ly ten per cent of nurs­es are per­ma­nent, he said.

“The RHAs are not prop­er­ly ex­am­in­ing their staff es­tab­lish­ments. Those per­sons not in­form­ing the RHAs that they are leav­ing, so they take va­ca­tion, they go at the end of the con­tract and they leave. The RHA is think­ing that they are com­ing back but when they re­alise that they leave they send cor­re­spon­dence say­ing if they don’t come back, it will be job aban­don­ment,” Stu­art said.

He added: “We sym­pa­thise with the min­is­ter for not hav­ing that in­for­ma­tion and mak­ing those com­ments which the rank-and-file nurse knows to be patent­ly false.”

A reg­is­tered nurse, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said un­safe work­ing con­di­tions, a lack of sup­port from se­nior staff, and low salary are some rea­sons why many of her co-work­ers have left to work abroad. She said many more are set to go.

Last week­end, Avant Health­care Pro­fes­sion­als held re­cruit­ment ses­sions for nurs­es in­ter­est­ed in em­ploy­ment in the US. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 250 peo­ple at­tend­ed the pre­sen­ta­tions.

Nurs­es se­lect­ed for the Avant pro­gramme are pro­vid­ed with ex­ten­sive sup­port, in­clud­ing as­sis­tance with all the steps for li­cen­sure in the US, fil­ing of im­mi­gra­tion pa­per­work for Green Card spon­sor­ship, and an ex­ten­sive cul­tur­al and clin­i­cal tran­si­tion pro­gramme.

To­day and to­mor­row, the Unit­ed King­dom’s Na­tion­al Health Ser­vice (NHS) will host a re­cruit­ment dri­ve for reg­is­tered nurs­es El­i­gi­ble per­sons must have at least ten months of paid ex­pe­ri­ence. El­i­gi­ble can­di­dates should al­so have com­plet­ed and achieved a pass mark in Eng­lish from ei­ther OET or IELTS Aca­d­e­m­ic.

The NHS will pro­vide a free flight to the UK and ini­tial ac­com­mo­da­tion for suc­cess­ful can­di­dates

Ac­cord­ing to the NHS, the start­ing salary for reg­is­tered nurs­es ranges per year from £21,730 to £27,055. Stu­art said that is dou­ble what the ma­jor­i­ty of nurs­es earn in T&T.

He said re­cruit­ment agen­cies are not just of­fer­ing bet­ter salaries but ac­com­mo­da­tion for the nurse’s en­tire fam­i­ly.

“Imag­ine that the nurse will have more se­cu­ri­ty in terms of hous­ing when they mi­grate when com­pared to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.