The Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ting to ad­dress crit­i­cal short­ages with­in the pub­lic health­care sys­tem, with a fo­cus on in­creas­ing nurs­ing per­son­nel and im­prov­ing pro­fes­sion­al out­comes. Min­is­ter of Health Dr Lakram Bo­doe an­nounced on Fri­day that ef­forts are un­der­way to fill 1,868 nurs­ing va­can­cies across the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs) in Trinidad.

Speak­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) School of Nurs­ing grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny, held at the Cou­va Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty in Preysal, Dr Bo­doe out­lined the staffing gaps: 625 at the North West RHA (NWRHA), 143 at the North Cen­tral RHA (NCRHA), 719 at the South West RHA (SWRHA), and 381 at the East­ern RHA (ER­HA). He con­firmed that the Min­istry of Health will seek fund­ing in the up­com­ing na­tion­al bud­get to be­gin fill­ing these po­si­tions.

“I am pleased to an­nounce that the NWRHA has em­ployed 97 nurs­es and 59 ENAs, it is al­ready hap­pen­ing. At one of the RHAs, 69 nurs­es have al­ready as­sumed du­ties,” Dr Bo­doe said.

How­ev­er, while re­cruit­ment con­tin­ues, the Min­is­ter raised con­cern over the high fail­ure rate in the Re­gion­al Ex­am­i­na­tion for Nurse Reg­is­tra­tion (RENR). In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, he ref­er­enced a re­cent ob­ser­va­tion by the Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNA), who re­port­ed that near­ly 50 per cent of can­di­dates are fail­ing the ex­am.

“If this sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ues, then many of the grad­u­ates from lo­cal nurs­ing schools may not get reg­is­tra­tion to prac­tise,” Dr Bo­doe said. “As the Min­is­ter of Health, I be­lieve this is an un­ac­cept­able sit­u­a­tion. I am await­ing a re­sponse from the rel­e­vant nurs­ing bod­ies, the Nurs­ing Coun­cil and the TTNA, on what hur­dles must be over­come to fix this, so that all of our nurs­es who grad­u­ate will be able to get their reg­is­tra­tion and do what they are be­ing ed­u­cat­ed and trained to do.”

The RENR is a key reg­is­tra­tion re­quire­ment for en­try-lev­el nurs­es and en­sures they are com­pe­tent to prac­tise. With­out pass­ing it, grad­u­ates can­not be recog­nised as Reg­is­tered Nurs­es (RNs)