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Guyana working towards improving nurse to patient ratio

Sep 01, 2012 News

Premised on a need to address the nurse to patient ratio, the local Ministry of Health has for the past few years been seeking to increase its intake of students at the country’s nursing schools. Currently Guyana’s nurse to patient ratio stands at about 11 to 10,000, according to Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr. Shamdeo Persaud.
“Nurses are quite a critical part of any health system, and the ratio that we have right now is really not very good. In most other countries the ratio is beyond what we have…they certainly have beyond 200, and in some cases even up to 500 nurses per 10,000 population.”
Dr. Persaud explained that the Ministry has recognised the need to “strike a balance” when it comes to training health professionals, even as he pointed out that adequate health services are dependent on trained health professionals being in place.
“Unless you have the trained health professionals, it is sometimes very difficult to really ensure that you are getting the kind of messages and services out there,” he asserted.
Against this background, the CMO revealed that the Ministry had for some years been working tirelessly to increase its quota of health professionals, particularly nurses. This move, he said, was evident by Government’s investment in the expansion and addition of a number of health facilities and services across the country, which was designed to ensure equity in health care delivery.
As such the need for more health professionals had become a glaring requirement.
“We found that we really didn’t have the manpower to run our facilities with the rate of nurses that were being produced by our country’s nursing schools. In the past we were hovering over about 40 to 50 nurses per year.”
Over the past few years there has been a marked increase in the numbers produced by the country’s nursing schools – the Georgetown School of Nursing, the New Amsterdam School of Nursing and the Charles Roza School of Nursing. The privately-operated St Joseph Mercy Hospital also facilitates a nursing programme of its own.
According to Dr. Persaud, “the efforts toward developing the training capacity has been one that is really noble in the sense that we really want to bring it to a stage where we can provide all the services.”
He did however acknowledge that there are limits to capacities, which by extension could have curtailed the number of applicants accepted for training. In light of this, he said additional classroom spaces have been acquired, among them the former Guyana Water Incorporated head office at Fort Street, Kingston, Georgetown.
This location now complements that of the Georgetown School of Nursing situated at East Street. Further, Dr. Persaud disclosed that nursing schools at New Amsterdam and Linden have additional resources in place, thus they now have a greater capacity to train more nurses.
More Tutors
An increase in nursing students has expectedly raised the question of the need for more tutors, Dr. Persaud noted, even as he insisted that “unless you are placed in an environment where you can actually teach, you really wouldn’t be able to develop your skills. So what comes first? Do we stop everything and train tutors slowly?”
According to the CMO, over the past few years the Ministry has trained several tutors, but the number of students at that time did not require the service of an increased number of tutors. In essence, he said that the Ministry at the time was promoting out-migration, which has also been affecting the nursing population.
However, with the increased intake of students, he revealed that there is currently a demand for tutors, adding that suitably qualified persons have been coming forward.
“It is now a demand-driven service…Some (tutors) start by simply teaching a few special courses and then they become stimulated to move on and expand their range…so what we had with this tutor/students situation has really been a bit of a chicken and egg situation.”
Among those providing the tutoring service are doctors who, according to Dr. Persaud, have special modules within the nursing school curricula. He emphasised that the increased quota of students in no way affects the existing tutoring capability.

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