Latest update November 25th, 2024 1:00 AM
Sep 17, 2023 News
Kaieteur News – Since January last year, more than 300 nurses have resigned from the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC).
The country’s primary medical institution has been hard hit by a high number of nurse resignations in recent years and according to well-placed sources at the GPHC, at the end of 2022, close to 215 nurses had resigned from the hospital.
By the end of August this year, more than 100 nurses tendered their resignations from the GPHC, another source noted.
Last month, online news entity News Source, reported that some 1200 nurses should be manning the hospital since it is a 450-bed facility; however, the current staff roster is far below that figure grossly impacting the ratio of nurses manning the beds at the hospital.
The figures in the article were attributed to an interview the news site carried out with of Medical Services, Dr. Navindranauth Rambarran.
Migration to greener pastures has been the central reason for the mass exodus of healthcare professionals as many nurses have been taking up attractive packages offered by healthcare entities in the United Kingdom and the United States where there are severe shortages of nurses.
Several nurses who moved to the United Kingdom this year told this publication that their current salaries are double and triple the amount they were paid while working here. In addition, the relocation packages offered by the foreign hiring firms also cater for the well-being of the nurses’ families.
In July, President Irfaan Ali, while admitting that there is a shortage of nurses, said that Guyana is turning to Cuba to have nurses from that country join the workforce here.
In addition, the President said the government is making decisive moves to train nurses as another measure to combat the situation. “So we have to find the immediate measure, the medium term and long term. The medium and long term is to train and retrain and train more than the capacity that you need but the immediate term for example for nurses is to have nurses come into the system from external sources,” the President said.
He noted that the government has expanded its post-graduate training at the GPHC with 16 such programmes and the administration is looking to add more later this year. “We are developing a hybrid nursing programme to increase the training of nurses from about 150 to 200 per year to now enable us to train between 1000 to 1500 nurses per year. This programme has already started and not only the training of nurses, we are also working on specialized areas for nurses,” he disclosed.
Days after the President’s statement on the move to hire nurses from Cuba, Shadow Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Roysdale Forde decried the move. Forde noted that the government has failed to improve the working conditions of local healthcare providers but is ready to import nurses to fill the shortage in the system.
Forde noted that the approach by the government to address this extremely worrying shortage could only lead to a further diminished number of nurses causing a diminution of that important sector of our society.
In July this year, several nurses who were preparing to sit competency-based test (CBT) examinations which would enable them to work in the United Kingdom, told this publication that plans were afoot to block them from migrating after the local testing centre closed its doors.
The examinations were only offered at the Global Technology testing centre on Camp Street through an arrangement with the Pearson Vue testing network and the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) of the UK.
However, several nurses complained that the centre informed them via email that the entity was no longer offering the examination. One of the affected nurses said she was informed by Global Technology that that institution was upgrading its systems to a higher standard as mandated by Pearson Vue.
Nov 25, 2024
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