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THE NURSING SCHOOL IS A GREAT IDEA!

May 06, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Wonderful news for the people of my old county! The government is establishing a nursing school within the region. This is a development which could not have been timelier.
With the sheen not yet off the new hospital built in Canje, the establishment of a special ophthalmology hospital at Port Mourant, the upgrading of cottage hospitals and clinics and with a brand new private hospital soon to be opened in Belvedere, there will be a high demand for nurses and nursing assistants within Berbice.
The new nursing school will help to satisfy this demand by turning out qualified and trained nursing professionals. The decision by the government to open a nursing school could therefore not have come at a better time, because by the time the first batch of nurses and nurse aids are turned out, the demand would have far exceeded the available supply. It will certainly ensure that nurses would not have to be recruited from overseas, as seems now likely to be the case with teachers.
The establishment of the nursing school will also create jobs for a number of Berbicians. Right now if you have just graduated from school and want to become a nurse or medical professional, you have to travel to the city in order to gain admission to the government- and privately-run nursing schools. This has denied many Berbicans the opportunity of realising their ambitions. There is therefore bound to be great support for the establishment of this nursing school.
For those who never harboured ambitions of becoming a nurse, but who like so many Berbicans are struggling to find jobs within their homeland, this school will open new career avenues and who knows, many of the nurses will do as so many nurses have done, use their training as a passport to greener pastures.
Most of those graduating will no doubt find employment within public and private institutions within Berbice, but there is also a great need for home-care nursing professionals, since in many villages there are persons who are confined to their homes and who require nursing services. Some villages are also very far away and having a nurse or midwife nearby will help reduce transportation and other costs.
In many instances, families can hardly afford the passage to travel each day to the New Amsterdam Hospital to go and visit their relatives or to take them for dressing and other outpatient services. With more nurses available, certain outpatient services can be attended to by community services and it is hoped that the Minister of Health would, in the training of these nurses, recognise the need to tailor their training not just for them to work in hospitals, health clinics and at the mental institutions, but also to work within their own communities, providing personalised and private health care, which many of those already in the sector do on a part-time basis in any event, in order to supplement their income.
But while plaudits should be awarded to the Minister of Health for taking this initiative, he needs to be reminded that a considerable amount of savings could have accrued to taxpayers if the old New Amsterdam Hospital, a historic building, was not left to run into disrepair, resulting in it having to be vandalised to the extent that it is now no longer there.
That building could have doubled as both a nursing school and a dormitory for the students, many of whom would have been coming from far. In the process, about one hundred and fifty million dollars could have been saved.
As things now stand, taxpayers have to spend a full two hundred million dollars for the construction of a new nursing school which will take at least two years to complete at the rate at which government proceeds. With the old hospital, a new nursing school could have been up and running within months and perhaps even included a dormitory.
The government therefore has to see the wisdom in preserving old buildings, instead of allowing them to go into disrepair or when it pleases, to place on the auction block, so that those already with too much money can add it to their collection.

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