Zahra Gor­don

Reg­is­tered nurs­es and nurs­ing stu­dents who as­sem­bled out­side the Min­istry of Health, cor­ner of Park and Ed­ward Streets, Port-of-Spain were hop­ing to teach Min­is­ter of Health Dr Fuad Khan and the pub­lic the mean­ing of "re­spect." The group of about 40 uni­formed per­sons who gath­ered to sup­port the Nurs­ing Coun­cil of Trinidad & To­ba­go dur­ing a meet­ing with Khan on Mon­day hand­ed out fly­ers to mo­torists and pedes­tri­ans la­belled How to Dis­re­spect a Nurse 101.

Mem­ber of coun­cil, Rus­sel Sal­cedo said the coun­cil was sur­prised and amazed by the un­re­quest­ed turnout. This was the first meet­ing be­tween Khan and the coun­cil since the min­is­ter an­nounced ma­jor changes to the Nurs­es and Mid­wives Act on Ju­ly 2. The coun­cil is op­posed to Khan's pro­pos­al to par­tial­ly re­move the Re­gion­al Ex­am­i­na­tion for Nurse Reg­is­tra­tion. The ex­am is a re­quire­ment for nurse li­cen­sure in Cari­com states.

Sal­cedo said al­though the meet­ing was in­con­clu­sive, the coun­cil and the min­istry had found com­mon ground. "The min­is­ter made known his de­ci­sions and we came to a cen­tre in terms of the ex­am­i­na­tion and the peo­ple who are fail­ing out of the sys­tem."

A sec­ond meet­ing is sched­uled for Ju­ly 30. Khan de­scribe the meet­ing as "agree­able" and said there will be changes "to some ex­tent" to his pre­vi­ous de­c­la­ra­tions re­gard­ing the Act. "The ex­am will be struc­tured in such a man­ner that will help to de­vel­op the nurs­ing sec­tor in this coun­try, but the coun­cil must come back with pro­pos­als to the pro­pos­als."

The fail­ure rate of the ex­am­i­na­tion, which has been a point of con­tention be­tween Khan and the coun­cil, was clar­i­fied ac­cord­ing to Sal­cedo. "At the end of the day, those who fail out of the sys­tem, when we did the maths, are three to four per cent and yet those peo­ple are brought in­to the sys­tem as en­rolled nurs­ing as­sis­tants."

He added: "Min­is­ter felt part of the ex­am was a bit too sub­jec­tive. We have no beef re­al­ly. We are com­fort­able with chang­ing the com­po­si­tion of the ex­am. A reg­is­tered nurse, who was present but pre­ferred not to be named, said the ex­am was cru­cial to main­tain­ing stan­dards in the health sec­tor. "The ex­am is there to weed out bad eggs, make sure stan­dards are main­tained and pro­tect the pub­lic from mal­prac­tice." The nurse added that the is­sue of stan­dards fell up­on in­sti­tu­tions and not the coun­cil.