GPHC highlights importance of specialist nurses

Jul 01, 2013 News

In a quest to improve its many services while addressing the need for nurses, the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation has over the years introduced a number of training programmes, several of which have focused on enhanced nursing care.
For this reason, Director of Nursing Services, Sister Audrey Corry, said that the public hospital has been encouraging nurses to embark on specialist training whereby they are able to qualify themselves to the highest possible level in a particular area. This, she said, is needful if they are to deliver their services in a more proficient way.
It was against this very background, she said, that the hospital had introduced programmes such as the Anaesthesia and Psychiatric Nursing programmes. The hospital has also been training some nurses in the area of neonatal care and according to Sister Corry, “all of those things require staff so we are working on training.”
“What we are doing is looking to forge ahead with more specialist programmes so that we can help develop the role of nurses. We are looking to make our staff more competitive, make them stronger in terms of their skills and abilities and we are trying to help them to do a better job than they are doing,” explained Sister Corry.
And while it has been imperative at some locations that nurses have a general knowledge of all areas, she insisted that the need for specialist nurses cannot be disregarded. Moreover, she highlighted that “we still see the need for specialist nurses…and because of that fact we are moving ahead with many programmes that we are introducing in the hospitals nowadays. We do need the specialist people; we do need people who are in Critical Care, we do need people who are in Dialysis, we do need people who are in Paediatrics at a higher level.”
Specialist training, according to Sister Corry, has been an area that the GPHC has been emphasising over the past decade and moves have been made to work with nurses to develop their skills and knowledge. In this regard, she said that the hospital has even been considering suggestions from some nurses to allow exchange programmes whereby local nurses can visit overseas hospitals to get a firsthand understanding of their work even as overseas nurses are accommodated here. But since such an initiative could prove to be costly, efforts have not been made to realise this proposal, Sister Corry disclosed.
However, Sister Corry, who was at the time addressing the first batch of nurses to graduate from an inaugural Critical Care Nursing programme last week, urged that nurses do not become discouraged, but rather, “keep on doing what you are doing and do it well.”
The 15-month long programme, which was the brainchild of Assistant Director of the Nursing Services, Mr. Owen John, commenced on July 25, 2011 and not only sought to boost the ethical skills of the nurses but also entailed modules that dealt with care for patients with cardiovascular, pulmonary and neurological disorders, among others.
Courses were delivered on a voluntary basis by experienced and qualified Critical Care Nurses from the United States and catered mainly to nurses tasked with attending to patients in the Intensive Care Unit. Seventeen nurses graduated from the programme.
The initiation of the programme, according to John, was premised on expressed concerns that despite the best efforts of nurses assigned to the Unit, quality of care delivered would not improve significantly unless appropriate training was given to the nurses assigned to the Unit.
But John has expressed disappointment that the programme although thorough, in terms of its content, was not accredited by the Nursing Council. He disclosed too that no reason was offered as to why the programme was not accredited.
The Assistant Director of Nursing explained that without accreditation from the Nursing Council, the graduated nurses will not be in a position to lobby for promotions or even higher salaries with their added knowledge. However, Sister Corry is optimistic that the programme will eventually be accredited.

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GPHC highlights importance of specialist nurses

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