Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Forty years af­ter be­gin­ning their jour­ney in nurs­ing, mem­bers of Batch 22 re­unit­ed to cel­e­brate four decades since en­ter­ing the pro­fes­sion—a ca­reer path that took many of them across the coun­try and over­seas.

The group, who trained as reg­is­tered nurs­es un­der the Min­istry of Health, gath­ered at the City Hall Au­di­to­ri­um in San Fer­nan­do on Tues­day to mark the mile­stone, re­flect­ing on years of ser­vice in the lo­cal health­care sys­tem, while oth­ers went on to mi­grate and con­tin­ue their ca­reers abroad.

The nurs­es, some of whom have since re­tired, ac­knowl­edged that some of the chal­lenges that ex­ist­ed in the pro­fes­sion when they start­ed their ca­reers at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal have per­sist­ed over the years.

De­spite the chal­lenges, they nev­er wa­vered, as for many of them, nurs­ing was not just a job—it was a call­ing.

Di­ana Pro­cope, a reg­is­tered nurse, li­censed mid­wife and in­ten­sive care nurse, said some of her col­leagues fur­thered their ca­reers in the Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom and Cana­da for var­i­ous rea­sons, in­clud­ing more at­trac­tive re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­ages, ed­u­ca­tion, train­ing and bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions.

While there has been some im­prove­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly ad­di­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion­al and train­ing pro­grammes, she said sim­i­lar chal­lenges still ex­ist, in­clud­ing be­ing short-staffed and un­der­paid.

She said, “They’re still hav­ing chal­lenges as far as nurse-to-pa­tient ra­tio. We are still short-staffed as far as nurs­ing staff is con­cerned. We still have chal­lenges in terms of main­te­nance, hav­ing prop­er equip­ment to work with. So these are some of the chal­lenges we faced be­fore that we still con­tin­ue to face now.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she said nurs­es are still be­ing un­der­paid. “Those are things we are hop­ing can be im­proved,” she added.

Re­tired nurse Eileen Ramkha­lawan, who is now a COSTAATT lec­tur­er, re­called that when she en­tered nurs­ing, they faced more strin­gent stan­dards.

“When I re­flect back on the years gone by what nurs­ing was, it was a pro­gramme where­by stu­dents were quite dis­ci­plined. When they came in, they were un­mar­ried. They had no com­mit­ment. To­day it’s com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. We’re tak­ing stu­dents who are mar­ried and have fam­i­lies and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.”

Onelia Alex­is, a for­mer nurs­ing ed­u­ca­tion co­or­di­na­tor, de­scribed nurs­es as cham­pi­ons in their own right.

“They are cham­pi­ons as re­gards to all the things they have done through their nurs­ing ca­reer — from the be­gin­ning to their train­ing to be­come nurs­es to fo­cus on health and health­care of in­di­vid­u­als and a na­tion as a whole.”

Raw­tia Pu­choon, who re­turned from the Unit­ed States to at­tend the func­tion, said she trained lo­cal­ly for three and a half years be­fore mi­grat­ing in 2002.

Back then, she said she was not hap­py with her salary, and al­though her hus­band was work­ing, they were still strug­gling to make ends meet.

Pu­choon said she hopes nurs­es get prop­er recog­ni­tion and work­ing con­di­tions in T&T.

The T&T Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion had pre­vi­ous­ly warned that the coun­try faces a short­age of around 3,000 nurs­es, with ris­ing pa­tient-to-nurse ra­tios threat­en­ing qual­i­ty of care.

Fol­low­ing this, Health Min­is­ter Lack­ram Bo­doe promised to re­cruit 400 ad­di­tion­al nurs­es to help ad­dress the gap.

The min­is­ter was asked by Guardian Me­dia for an up­date on this mat­ter yes­ter­day, but there was no re­sponse up to press time.