Nurses are in short supply

Jul 19, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – Last Christmas, I paid a visit to one of the country’s public hospitals. It was during the midday visiting hours.

In one of the workstations of a female ward, there were 3 nurses. Their heads were bent on the table in which they were seated and they were all fast asleep.

I am not sure if this was because of the double shifts which they were forced to work or if they were having a snooze on working time. Whatever the case, it did not paint a pretty picture of a professional nursing service.

Over the years, there have been numerous complaints about the quality of nursing services offered at public institutions. In the past, there have been complaints about rudeness, lack of courtesy and nurses not taking enough interest in patients.  Some families have complained that they were forced to go and bathe their loved ones. Others have complained that the nursing staff was far from helpful.

This situation is contrasted with the foreign nurses who, it was said demonstrated a far superior work ethic, were more courteous and took a greater interest in patients’ well-being. This has led for calls for the government to import more foreign nurses.

The private hospitals are already overflowing with foreign nursing staff and doctors. In fact, the private healthcare system would shut down were it not for the presence of foreign medical personnel.

Now, the President has indicated that the Georgetown Public Corporation is short of hundreds of nurses. This is surprising since the GPHC is not a hospital which accommodates thousands of patients.

It can at best only hold a few hundred patients. The normal ratio of nurses to patients in the wards should be around 1 nurse to every 5 patients. For the emergency rooms, the ratio should be one to two. It is therefore hard to imagine how the GPHC can be short of hundreds of nurses even considering that there should be at least 3 shifts.

The President should request the number of nurses on payroll and the number on compliment and the number of patients. He should do his own independent analysis.

That said, the government has no choice but to import nurses. Nurses are leaving the public health system for countries such as the United Kingdom where nurses are in high demand. Earlier this year, reports out of Jamaica reported that Canada was also seeking internationally qualified nurses.

In 2021, more than 4,000 medical personnel migrated from Zimbabwe. Guyana’s Minister of Health has admitted that the country is losing large numbers of nurses to overseas recruiters.

Despite the exodus of local nurses to greener pastures, Guyana is supposed to have more than 3,000 nurses and midwives. But it appears as if even this number is not sufficient for the country’s healthcare system.

Many local nurses as soon as they complete their period of mandatory service, they leave for overseas. It is difficult for countries like Guyana to offer local nurses salaries that can compete with what they will earn in North America and Europe.

In the meantime, the demand for nurses is increasing. Private healthcare, with active government encouragement, is expanding. It too needs nurses and is recruiting both local and foreign nurses from India and Cuba.

The problem with nurses is not an overnight development. It has existed for some time and the government ought to have realized this when it went ahead with its hasty plans to build 12 new hospitals. It is now being confronted with the reality that it does not have the medical personnel to staff these hospitals.

Instead of reversing course, the government is now being forced to import nurses. Many Guyanese will welcome this decision because as mentioned before, there have been complaints about the quality of the services provided by local nurses.

But the government should not only import nurses. It should make an informed decision as to whether Guyana needs those 12 new hospitals that are being planned. Or whether it would not be much better to beef-up the existing facilities before launching any expansion.

It is not likely that the government will reverse its decision to build 12 new hospitals. No government likes to admit that it made a rash decision and did not consider the human resource and material requirements.

As such, the only option now is to import nurses. But instead of merely importing nurses, from Cuba, it should outsource the management of the 12 new hospitals to the Cubans. Guyana needs not only nurses but hospital administrators and there is no better place to find these than Cuba.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• Christmas, hospitals, Peeping Tom, public, visiting

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