Nursing is a calling not just an income earning profession - says Health Minister

Nursing is a calling not just an income earning profession – says Health Minister

Jun 09, 2015 News

– as close attention is directed to nursing programme
The educational foundation of some nursing applicants is considerably lacking. This was the sentiment expressed by Minister of Public Health, Dr. George Norton, as he spoke of plans to give close attention to the applicants of the various nursing programmes offered by Government through the Health Ministry.

Dr. George Norton, Minister of Public Health

“You might be surprised to know that some of the student nurses have not done the Sciences. Physics, Chemistry and Biology might be like foreign languages to them,” said Dr. Norton. He described the state of affairs as unfortunate as Science subjects, in addition to others, are among the outlined requirements.
There have been allegations that some students who have applied and were accepted into the programme did not have the requisite subjects. Some reportedly did not even have the basic Mathematics and English and thus, had to take these courses simultaneous to the nursing curriculum.
Turning his attention to consistent alarming failure rates that have been seen in recent years, the Minister said that this is not only a result of the quality of students but also other shortcomings.
He listed instructors of the programme as well as the training infrastructures among the things for review, as the way forward is taken into serious consideration.
Another factor that has been raised in recent times is the urgent revision of the nursing programme. This belief was vocalised last year by Assistant Director of Nursing at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), Owen John.
“The way I see it, is that, if you have a situation where you are having a high fail rate for people that you would have screened and brought in to be trained…it means that these people were qualified and therefore, it means that something is wrong with the programme,” intimated Brother John.
Moreover, he is convinced that an alarming fail rate (which was recorded last year) among the Professional Nursing students across the country, is perhaps not the fault of the students themselves.
“This says something about the programme and so I would not want to necessarily blame the students; of course they would have to bear some level of responsibility but this did not happen at one nursing school, this happened across the country,” noted Brother John.
The Professional Nursing Programme, according to him, is standard at all nursing schools – Georgetown, New Amsterdam, Charles Rosa and St. Joseph Mercy – all of which recorded worrying failure rates. “How come all of these people failed this one exam? These are people with a lot of CXCs but yet they failed these exams,” said the Assistant Nursing Director as he stressed the need for the programme to be examined and adjusted.
In the past, he disclosed that the School of Nursing fell under the purview of the Georgetown Hospital but is currently managed directly by the Ministry of Health. “So what you find is that, control over the nursing students is no longer there. The hospital in the past had the opportunity, for example, to plan the nurses’ rotations but that doesn’t even happen anymore,” said Brother John.
This development, according to him, has created a void in terms of the exposure the nurses in training are permitted.
But even as the Minister of Health prepares to give close attention to the nursing programme, he ‘shared his conviction that nursing is more a calling than merely an income earning profession. “When you see somebody has decided to do nursing, it is because you expect that they are prepared to go out and exercise their profession to the best of their ability,” said the Health Minister who emphasised the need to “give them the best possible means of acquiring the needful skills.”
In helping the nurses to gain the needful skills, Dr. Norton highlighted the need for efforts to be directed to supporting the learning process of the nurses. “As Minister of Health I would say One Laptop for every nurse,” said the Minister, as he expressed his firm belief that like teachers nurses should fall into the category of the best paid public servants.
“Those are some of the things that we have to strive for and that would certainly influence the performance of our nurses and the pass rate,” said the Minister who claims to have a special fondness for nurses, as he has worked closely with nurses throughout his career in the public health system.