JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Less than two months af­ter re­duc­ing the over­time rates known as pool at the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA), the man­age­ment is now re­vert­ing to the old­er rates.

In March, the NCRHA dropped pool rates from $75 an hour to $60, claim­ing the high­er pay­out was in con­tra­ven­tion of the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer’s man­date.

In a Face­book post yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) said NCRHA man­age­ment “has now moved to tem­porar­i­ly in­crease the “pool” rate to $75 in a des­per­ate at­tempt to ad­dress the staffing cri­sis.”

The post was the sec­ond for the day, af­ter the TTNNA ear­li­er said the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex and the Mt Hope Women’s Hos­pi­tal were “at break­ing point.”

The TTNNA claimed there have been deaths at the EWM­SC, the most re­cent be­ing yes­ter­day, af­ter a pa­tient spent six days on a trol­ley at the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency (A&E) de­part­ment due to staff short­age.

“Staff have in­di­cat­ed that nurs­es are be­ing forced to cov­er two and some­times three ar­eas si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly with­in the A&E De­part­ment. Un­der such im­pos­si­ble con­di­tions, it is in­evitable that crit­i­cal­ly ill pa­tients are not be­ing at­tend­ed to in a time­ly man­ner, re­sult­ing in pa­tients be­ing left un­treat­ed and, in some cas­es, los­ing their lives,” the TTNNA said.

The union said apart from a nurse short­age, ward staff were equal­ly over­whelmed, adding that in some cas­es nurs­es are work­ing alone and are sim­ply un­able to safe­ly ad­mit mul­ti­ple pa­tients from A&E in­to al­ready over­crowd­ed wards.

The TTNNA said the re­turn to pool rates is be­ing used to en­tice work­ers, adding that it on­ly ap­plies for the week­end, with the rate set to re­vert to $60 on Mon­day.

“Man­age­ment ap­par­ent­ly be­lieves nurs­es are naïve enough to fall for this tem­po­rary mea­sure — to clear the back­log in A&E, fill the wards over the week­end, and then re­turn staff to the same un­ac­cept­able con­di­tions by Mon­day,” it stat­ed.

The TTNNA said those re­spon­si­ble for cre­at­ing the staff cri­sis must make the $75 ex­tra-du­ty rate per­ma­nent across the board and not as a tem­po­rary emer­gency re­sponse.

“Imag­ine it took the un­nec­es­sary loss of scores of lives for the au­thor­i­ty to tem­porar­i­ly re­verse its de­ci­sion. The as­so­ci­a­tion hopes the Min­is­ter of Health fi­nal­ly ac­knowl­edges that there are se­ri­ous is­sues at NCRHA fa­cil­i­ties un­der the chair­man­ship of Tim Goopeesingh, in­stead of con­tin­u­ing to ig­nore the grow­ing cri­sis fac­ing pa­tients and health­care work­ers alike.”

From April 28, nurs­es be­gan a work-to-rule, main­tain­ing a strict six pa­tients to one nurse ra­tio.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last month, NCRHA chair­man Gopeesingh said the lack of staff had im­pact­ed the Women’s Hos­pi­tal but it did not stop pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

Guardian Me­dia called and mes­saged Gopeesingh on the mat­ter yes­ter­day but up to press time there was no re­sponse.

In an un­re­lat­ed in­ci­dent, the NCRHA al­so re­fut­ed a so­cial me­dia claim that oxy­gen tanks at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal were re­moved due to a lack of pay­ment to the sup­pli­er.

In a me­dia re­lease, the NCRHA said the post may have stemmed from mis­in­for­ma­tion about an in­ter­nal com­mu­nique that was shared pub­licly.

“The con­tentious claim is yet an­oth­er at­tempt to cre­ate un­nec­es­sary alarm and mis­chief sur­round­ing the op­er­a­tions of the au­thor­i­ty in re­cent times. Checks con­duct­ed with Mr Davlin Thomas, the Hos­pi­tal Man­ag­er at Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal, have con­firmed that there is no is­sue with the oxy­gen sup­ply or oxy­gen tanks at the fa­cil­i­ty.”

The post stat­ed that the NCRHA had failed to pay Massy Gas Prod­ucts, re­sult­ing in the com­pa­ny re­mov­ing sev­er­al oxy­gen tanks from the hos­pi­tal.

NCRHA stat­ed that Massy Gas Prod­ucts al­so con­firmed there are no fi­nan­cial is­sues be­tween the com­pa­ny and the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty.