Eight nurses within the health sector – two from the Georgetown Public Hospital and six from Berbice – are the first set of nurses in Guyana being trained to become psychiatric nurses through a course being run by the Ministry of Health, in collaboration with the University of Dalhousie and the Nova Scotia Ministry of Health in Canada.
During an interview with Guyana Times International, Health Minister Dr. Leslie Ramsammy disclosed that the nurses are going to function as first responders to persons with mental health illnesses at the hospitals countrywide. “We are building a greater capacity to respond in an effective way to … problems of mental health,” Dr Ramsammy said. The distance learning course is completed online for three weeks. Following that period, the student nurses are required to complete a two-week practical exercise in wards under the supervision of trainers from Nova Scotia.
The course, which will last for 12 months, has twelve modules. Upon completion of the graduate course, each nurse will receive a diploma in psychiatric nursing. This is the first time that the Health Ministry is using technology to facilitate training. It is also the first time that the ministry would be using training facilitated by the expertise of Canadians.
In the last few years, there have been many strides to improve the services offered to mental health patients. Added to this new initiative is the training of doctors to not only be general practitioners, but to also be specialists. It is felt that the health sector will inevitably be improved with more specialists.
In the mental health programme, there are 21 patient care assistants. These are junior nurses who are trained specifically to deal with psychiatric patients. Additionally, a standard treatment guideline for doctors on how to identify and treat common psychiatric illnesses has been established. These cover illnesses such as drug abuse and schizophrenia, among other illnesses.
Presently, there are three trained psychiatrists and three general psychiatrists working at the National Psychiatric Hospital and the Georgetown Hospital.
