Concerns relating to nursing school will be addressed – Dr Ramsaran

The Georgetown Nursing School will be further improved and concerns raised by students over recent weeks will be addressed. This is according to Health Minister Dr Bheri Ramsaran who told Guyana Times International that measures are already being put in place to deal with the issues that were brought to the attention of his ministry.
The health minister stated that a meeting was held recently at the Office of the President, during which executive members of the Georgetown Nursing School Student Council met and discussed their issues with him and President Donald Ramotar. The first step to improving the nursing school is to expand and renovate the building. While the extension of the southern section of the building is close to completion, the Health Ministry is looking to expand another section. However, the main concern that was raised was the quality of service.
The health minister told Guyana Times International that the ministry is already looking to split classes into two time slots, from 08: 00hrs to 16: 00hrs and from 16: 00hrs to a time to be decided later.
Another issue was the shortage of teachers. However, Dr Ramsaran stated that the issue will be resolved as the ministry has now decided to employ doctors as teachers in the nursing school. While admitting that not all doctors can be teachers, he pointed to the fact that in the past, Guyana produced scores of professional and well qualified nurses who were taught by doctors. Two overseas-based doctors who have experience teaching both doctors and nurses have indicated their willingness to serve as teachers at the nursing school.

PAHO review
Meanwhile, Minister Ramsaran revealed that with the help of the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), a review of the current nursing curriculum was done. PAHO found that the semester schedule is not being followed by the tutors.
The ministry will be meeting with tutors to clarify this issue and to ensure that they follow the curriculum, in order to get more out of their teaching. This will hopefully help to improve the quality of the current nursing programmes, with some additional changes. The ministry is also training nurses annually in computer literacy. This is being done to make nurses more efficient in ITC, which government is looking to introduce in hospital record keeping.

Dr Ramsaran noted that his ministry is running this programme with the help of the National Centre for Educational Resource Development ( NCERD) and the National Data Management Authority of the University of Guyana for which a monetary allocation is set aside annually.
The Alliance For Change (AFC) in recent weeks has called for a review of the current programmes offered at the Georgetown School of Nursing, as the party believes that the quality of the programmes are being compromised.
Party Chairman Khemraj Ramjattan said that the AFC was recently informed that the school was still accepting students despite overpopulation. Ramjattan believed that that poses a great challenge for tutors and the effectiveness of the nursing programme.
The AFC executive member argued that at no time should quality be sacrificed for quantity. Ramjattan went on to explain the effects such an approach may have on the health services provided. “This situation does not bode well for the future of health care in Guyana as in a few years, these students will become registered nurses but they will lack the competence to provide quality health care. Such a situation will result in many patients in the future not being properly looked after and possibly resulting in deaths,” he said.
The party also called for several issues to be addressed including, the sanitary conditions, classroom seating, and the availability of competent and qualified lecturers, availability of adequate clinical instructors and internet services. There have been several complaints over the years, as it relates to the operation of the Georgetown School of Nursing. Overcrowding and insanitary conditions have been among the main issues for students and lecturers.