Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

The Nurs­ing Coun­cil of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NCTT) plans to write Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion, Prakash Per­sad, call­ing for a meet­ing dis­cuss is­sues raised by nurs­ing stu­dents at the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts (Costaatt).

This fol­lows a let­ter of com­plaint sent to the in­sti­tu­tion’s ad­min­is­tra­tion on be­half of stu­dents who at­tend the School of Nurs­ing, Health and Med­ical Tech­nolo­gies.

In the let­ter, the stu­dents raised their con­cerns over the shift to face-to-face class­es from on­line class­es. They said the sud­den de­ci­sion to move cer­tain lab and nurs­ing cours­es back to in-per­son de­liv­ery was prob­lem­at­ic, as they be­lieve that these ses­sions can still be ef­fec­tive­ly taught on­line. The change, they said, will af­fect full-time work­ers, those with tight sched­ules or long com­mutes.

“We ask that the col­lege ex­plore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of of­fer­ing at least one ful­ly on­line ses­sion (lec­ture and lab) per course. This would great­ly ben­e­fit not on­ly work­ing stu­dents but al­so those who re­side in To­ba­go,” the let­ter said.

The stu­dents added that the col­lege gave the im­pres­sion that it did not care about stu­dents’ men­tal health, fi­nan­cial chal­lenges, or any oth­er is­sues they may be fac­ing.

“This de­ci­sion ap­pears very in­con­sid­er­ate,” the let­ter said.

The stu­dents al­so made spe­cif­ic com­plaints about com­mu­ni­ca­tion, point­ing to de­layed clin­i­cals in To­ba­go de­spite their readi­ness to be­gin dur­ing the short se­mes­ter.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse yes­ter­day, NCTT pres­i­dent Corey George em­pha­sised that nurs­ing and mid­wifery ed­u­ca­tion are not de­signed to func­tion as pure­ly on­line or part-time pro­grammes, as they re­quire hands-on, skills-based train­ing to en­sure grad­u­ates are com­pe­tent and pre­pared to de­liv­er safe, qual­i­ty care to the pub­lic.

How­ev­er, he said the is­sues raised were deeply trou­bling and were not un­fa­mil­iar to the coun­cil.

“These con­cerns re­flect not just lo­gis­ti­cal mis­steps but sys­temic gaps in re­spect for the stan­dards, struc­ture, and lead­er­ship re­quired for the prop­er de­liv­ery of nurs­ing ed­u­ca­tion,” George said.

He said while stu­dents should not be ful­ly em­ployed dur­ing this in­ten­sive pro­gramme, the coun­cil was aware that the cul­ture cur­rent­ly al­lowed at Costaatt had en­abled this to be­come the norm.

“The re­sult is a co­hort of frus­trat­ed stu­dents func­tion­ing with­in a sys­tem that fails to sup­port the unique de­mands of nurs­ing ed­u­ca­tion or to re­spect the au­thor­i­ty and ex­per­tise of nurs­ing lead­er­ship,” he said.

George said the coun­cil re­cent­ly held dis­cus­sions with both the Min­is­ter of Health and the Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Health and will be con­ven­ing a meet­ing with all di­rec­tors of schools of nurs­ing across the coun­try.

He added that it is well known that Costaatt in its cur­rent form, had fall­en short in main­tain­ing these crit­i­cal stan­dards and this short­fall di­rect­ly im­pacts the qual­i­ty of the learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment, stu­dent out­comes, and ul­ti­mate­ly, the health­care sys­tem that re­lies on well-pre­pared grad­u­ates.

“It is un­ac­cept­able, and the col­lege’s lead­er­ship must take full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for these de­fi­cien­cies,” he said.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter Per­sad said he would look in­to the mat­ter.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Costaatt but there was no re­sponse up to press time.