Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Re­porter

soyi­ni.grey@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) is urg­ing cau­tion as the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) launch­es its new pa­tient care shut­tle at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) in Mt Hope.

On Wednes­day, the au­thor­i­ty un­veiled the ser­vice with two eight-seater golf carts that will trans­port pa­tients through­out the hos­pi­tal cam­pus, in­clud­ing to and from the carpark and main en­trances.

Speak­ing at the launch, NCRHA CEO Bhadese See­ta­hal-Maraj said pa­tient care ex­tend­ed be­yond med­ical treat­ment and in­clud­ed meet­ing pa­tients’ needs be­fore they reached their des­ti­na­tion with­in the hos­pi­tal.

“Pa­tient care in­volves not on­ly med­ical sup­plies, med­ical at­ten­tion, beds, space and all those things that come af­ter. When pa­tients come to the hos­pi­tal, we have to think about all their needs and re­quire­ments be­fore they ac­tu­al­ly reach the area.”

The golf cart ser­vice will op­er­ate dai­ly from 6 am to 10 pm.

NCRHA chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh was en­thu­si­as­tic about the project and demon­strat­ed dri­ving one of the carts dur­ing the launch.

He said that, as the largest hos­pi­tal cam­pus in the coun­try, the EWM­SC dis­charges be­tween 40 and 50 pa­tients every day, some of whom may strug­gle with their mo­bil­i­ty or the dis­tance they have to trav­el.

How­ev­er, out­go­ing TTNNA pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art said that while the project was not bad on the sur­face, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the size of the EWM­SC cam­pus, he did not con­sid­er the choice of ve­hi­cle pru­dent.

“We would al­so want to know some of the safe­ty pre­cau­tions be­cause if the au­thor­i­ty is now tak­ing up­on them­selves to of­fer this ser­vice now, they could be­come li­able if any­one falls off this golf carts,” he said.

The as­so­ci­a­tion is al­so con­cerned about which cat­e­go­ry of staff would be used to dri­ve the carts and which cat­e­go­ry of pa­tients would be trans­port­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the carts are not en­closed ve­hi­cles.

Stu­art point­ed out that oth­er health au­thor­i­ties use pan­el vans as shut­tles.

The con­cerns come against the back­drop of on­go­ing fi­nan­cial is­sues be­tween the NCRHA and health­care work­ers.

Ear­li­er this year, the au­thor­i­ty tem­porar­i­ly stopped nurs­es’ $75-an-hour pool rates for over­time work be­fore hav­ing to re­in­state them af­ter staff ob­ject­ed.

Nurs­es al­so held protests over stalled salary in­creas­es.

Stu­art said the pur­chase of the golf carts sug­gests the NCRHA is more fi­nan­cial­ly sta­ble than it has claimed in meet­ings with the as­so­ci­a­tion.

“We look for­ward to the au­thor­i­ty re­solv­ing a num­ber of the fi­nan­cial is­sues our mem­bers and all oth­er health­care work­ers have been fac­ing: from in­cre­ments to non-pay­ment of gra­tu­ity, to de­layed pen­sion pay­ments.”