Carisa Lee

COSTAATT Pres­i­dent Dr Kei­th Nurse says the col­lege re­mains com­mit­ted to close en­gage­ment with nurs­ing stu­dents and stake­hold­ers fol­low­ing com­plaints about the rein­tro­duc­tion of in-per­son lab ses­sions and clin­i­cals.

In a let­ter to Nurse, stu­dents from the School of Nurs­ing said the change from on­line to face-to-face class­es would dis­ad­van­tage full-time work­ers and those with long com­mutes, and point­ed to de­layed clin­i­cal place­ments in To­ba­go.

COSTAATT con­firmed it had re­ceived the let­ter and held meet­ings with stu­dents, but said in-per­son par­tic­i­pa­tion was es­sen­tial to meet pro­fes­sion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards in health­care.

Nurs­ing Coun­cil pres­i­dent Corey George called the con­cerns trou­bling and said COSTAATT had pre­vi­ous­ly fall­en short in main­tain­ing aca­d­e­m­ic and clin­i­cal stan­dards. The col­lege said it would con­tin­ue en­gag­ing all stake­hold­ers to ad­dress con­cerns and im­prove the learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

COSTAATT con­firmed re­ceipt of the let­ter and said sev­er­al meet­ings were held with nurs­ing stu­dents to ful­ly ad­dress their con­cerns and ex­plain the pro­gramme’s aca­d­e­m­ic and pro­fes­sion­al re­quire­ments. How­ev­er, the col­lege de­fend­ed the move back to face-to-face in­struc­tion, de­scrib­ing it as both a pol­i­cy po­si­tion and a ped­a­gog­i­cal ne­ces­si­ty.

“This com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach is es­sen­tial for equip­ping our stu­dents with the hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence, crit­i­cal think­ing, and pro­fes­sion­al com­pe­ten­cies re­quired to ex­cel in di­verse health­care set­tings and to meet in­ter­na­tion­al pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards,” the col­lege said in a state­ment. “The nurs­ing pro­gramme is in­dis­pens­able to the na­tion’s health­care sec­tor, con­sis­tent­ly pro­duc­ing com­pe­tent and com­pas­sion­ate pro­fes­sion­als.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, pres­i­dent of the Nurs­ing Coun­cil of Trinidad and To­ba­go Corey George de­scribed the is­sues raised by stu­dents as “deeply trou­bling” and said they were not un­fa­mil­iar to the coun­cil. He added that COSTAATT, in its cur­rent form, had fall­en short of main­tain­ing crit­i­cal aca­d­e­m­ic and clin­i­cal stan­dards, and that this short­fall af­fect­ed not on­ly the stu­dent ex­pe­ri­ence but al­so the broad­er health­care sys­tem that re­lies on well-pre­pared grad­u­ates.