The North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) will meet to­day with the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTR­NA) to con­tin­ue dis­cus­sions on nurs­ing-re­lat­ed con­cerns and to es­tab­lish a struc­tured plan to ad­dress op­er­a­tional chal­lenges.

The NCRHA said its new Board of Di­rec­tors, which has been in of­fice for eight weeks, re­mains com­mit­ted to di­a­logue and col­lab­o­ra­tion aimed at im­prov­ing ser­vice de­liv­ery across all its fa­cil­i­ties.

To­day’s meet­ing fol­lows a pub­lic ex­change be­tween NCRHA chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh and TTR­NA pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art over claims of a se­vere nurs­ing short­age at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) in Mt Hope. Stu­art re­cent­ly warned that un­der­staffing was af­fect­ing pa­tient care, prompt­ing Gopeesingh to ac­cuse him of cre­at­ing un­nec­es­sary pan­ic and to urge him to seek di­a­logue in­stead.

Dr Gopeesingh said the Au­thor­i­ty cur­rent­ly has 893 staffed nurs­ing po­si­tions, all filled in line with the ap­proved es­tab­lish­ment. He added that the NCRHA re­cent­ly ad­ver­tised more than 300 va­can­cies for en­rolled nurs­ing as­sis­tants to strength­en front­line nurs­ing ca­pac­i­ty.

So far, 34 qual­i­fied ap­pli­cants have been in­ter­viewed and are in the process of be­ing ap­point­ed to their posts, with re­cruit­ment con­tin­u­ing.

The Au­thor­i­ty is al­so pro­mot­ing about 40 act­ing head nurs­es, a di­rec­tive left out­stand­ing for sev­er­al years. The NCRHA said the mea­sure will cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for ad­di­tion­al nurs­es to en­ter the sys­tem and pro­vide cov­er­age and sup­port dur­ing pe­ri­ods of high pa­tient de­mand or staff ab­sence.

Over the past two weeks, the Board has al­so met with the Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Nurs­ing, se­nior nurs­ing ad­min­is­tra­tors, and head nurs­es from each hos­pi­tal to as­sess chal­lenges and be­gin im­ple­ment­ing agreed im­prove­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly on staffing and re­sources.

The NCRHA said the cur­rent Board has pri­ori­tised cor­rect­ing long-stand­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive gaps and reg­u­lar­is­ing act­ing ap­point­ments, as part of ef­forts to strength­en sys­tems, sup­port staff, and im­prove pa­tient care.