Carisa Lee

Re­porter

Carisa.Lee@cnc3.co.tt

The Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of Trinidad and To­ba­go (COSTAATT) has re­spond­ed to nurs­ing stu­dents’ con­cerns over the re­turn to in-per­son class­es.

The in­sti­tu­tion in­sists that qual­i­ty nurs­ing ed­u­ca­tion can­not be de­liv­ered on­line and stands by its de­ci­sion.

Pres­i­dent Dr Kei­th Nurse reaf­firmed COSTAATT’s com­mit­ment to work­ing with stu­dents, but made it clear that the col­lege would not com­pro­mise on es­sen­tial ed­u­ca­tion­al stan­dards for the nurs­ing pro­fes­sion.

His state­ment came af­ter con­cerned stu­dents of the School of Nurs­ing, Health and Med­ical Tech­nolo­gies wrote a let­ter to him last month, high­light­ing their con­cerns with the rein­tro­duc­tion of in-per­son class­es.

In the let­ter, the stu­dents said the sud­den de­ci­sion to move cer­tain lab and nurs­ing cours­es back to in-per­son de­liv­ery was prob­lem­at­ic, as they be­lieved that these ses­sions could still be ef­fec­tive­ly taught on­line. The change, they said, would af­fect full-time work­ers and those with tight sched­ules or long com­mutes.

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

The in­sti­tu­tion con­firmed re­ceipt of the let­ter and in re­sponse said it held sev­er­al pro­duc­tive meet­ings with nurs­ing stu­dents to thor­ough­ly ad­dress their is­sues and pro­vide clar­i­ty on pro­gramme re­quire­ments and sup­port mech­a­nisms.

How­ev­er, COSTAATT re­mained adamant in its po­si­tion that full-time par­tic­i­pa­tion and rig­or­ous in-per­son clin­i­cal place­ments were not on­ly pol­i­cy but al­so a crit­i­cal ped­a­gog­i­cal im­per­a­tive.

“This com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach is es­sen­tial for equip­ping our stu­dents with the hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence, crit­i­cal think­ing, and pro­fes­sion­al com­pe­ten­cies re­quired to ex­cel in di­verse health­care set­tings and to meet in­ter­na­tion­al pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards. The nurs­ing pro­gramme is in­dis­pens­able to the na­tion’s health­care sec­tor, con­sis­tent­ly pro­duc­ing com­pe­tent and com­pas­sion­ate pro­fes­sion­als,” COSTAATT said.

Con­tact­ed for a re­sponse to the stu­dents’ let­ter on Mon­day, NCTT pres­i­dent Corey George said the is­sues raised were deeply trou­bling and were not un­fa­mil­iar to the coun­cil.

He added that it was well known that COSTAATT, in its cur­rent form, had fall­en short in main­tain­ing some crit­i­cal stan­dards and this di­rect­ly im­pact­ed the qual­i­ty of the learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment, stu­dent out­comes, and ul­ti­mate­ly, the health­care sys­tem that re­lied on well-pre­pared grad­u­ates.

Last month, T&T Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art re­vealed that more than half of the stu­dents who sat the Re­gion­al Ex­am­i­na­tion for Nurse Reg­is­tra­tion failed the ex­ams.

George said the high fail­ure rate among stu­dents was due to the cur­ricu­lum not be­ing aligned with the ex­am. He added that both the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies School of Nurs­ing and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean were re­view­ing their cur­ric­u­la. But there was a chal­lenge with the COSTAATT School of Nurs­ing, which had yet to re­view its cur­ricu­lum or sub­mit it to the coun­cil for re­view.

In a re­sponse, the col­lege said it was com­mit­ted to an on­go­ing process of en­gage­ment and would con­tin­ue to meet col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with all stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the Nurs­ing Coun­cil of T&T, to proac­tive­ly ad­dress con­cerns and fos­ter a sup­port­ive aca­d­e­m­ic en­vi­ron­ment.