The A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) is demanding a complete re-evaluation of nurse training in order to improve patient care.
The coalition in a release said public concerns have been expressed over recent and repeated reports of mismanagement in hospital wards, mistreatment of patients and mistakes leading to maternal deaths.
The Guyana Nurses Association (GNA) has pointed out, however, that the problems facing the health care system are chronic, and the most serious being the conditions and quality of nurse training.
The Health Ministry manages three nursing schools – the Georgetown School of Nursing, the New Amsterdam School of Nursing and the Charles Roza Nursing School – all of which have experienced major problems.
The results of the most recent professional nursing examination were evidence of deep-rooted difficulties and deficiencies in training.
Results of nursing students who participated in final examinations in October 2013 were released last month. Reports indicated that, of 120 student nurses from the Georgetown School of Nursing, only 19 were successful. A total of 255 student nurses entered the three-year Professional Nursing Programme in April 2010 but just over 120 persevered to write the final examinations.
Senior officials from the Georgetown Public Hospital and Guyana Nurses Association executives expressed alarm at the high failure rate of the last cohort of student nurses from Georgetown, Linden and New Amsterdam. The main problems cited in the three schools were overcrowding, understaffing, insufficient training materials, inadequate infrastructure and indiscipline.
APNU pointed out that Guyana spends about Gy$600 million on nurses’ education annually but is losing too many graduates through migration to foreign countries. APNU demands an immediate and intense investigation into nurse training in order to stop the haemorrhaging and rectify the problems in the health care system.
