CARISA LEE

Re­porter

Fol­low­ing a warn­ing from the Nurs­ing Coun­cil, COSTATT (the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of Trinidad and To­ba­go) has in­formed stu­dents who reg­is­tered for the Ad­vanced Cer­tifi­cate in Nurs­ing As­sis­tant Pro­gramme that they will be de-reg­is­tered from the course.

The course was sched­uled to be­gin on Mon­day (Sep­tem­ber 8, 2025).

How­ev­er, in an of­fi­cial state­ment, COSTAATT said it had re­ceived ap­proval from the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil in No­vem­ber 2024.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that at least 17 stu­dents who reg­is­tered for the course were in­formed about its post­pone­ment yes­ter­day.

Pres­i­dent of the Nurs­ing Coun­cil of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Corey George, said that as soon as he be­came aware of the pro­gramme, he ad­vised COSTAATT’s pres­i­dent, Dr Kei­th Nurse, that train­ing must not com­mence un­til ap­proval has been grant­ed by both the Nurs­ing and the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cils.

COSTAATT said the pro­gramme has not been ad­ver­tised nor has it been of­fi­cial­ly launched, and as such, no stu­dent will be placed at risk by pre­ma­ture pro­gramme de­liv­ery at the in­sti­tu­tion.

***This is an up­date to a pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished sto­ry. The ear­li­er re­port fol­lows, be­low...

Stu­dents en­rolled in the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (COSTAATT) Ad­vanced Cer­tifi­cate in Nurs­ing As­sis­tant pro­gramme have been told they will be de-reg­is­tered from the course, which was sched­uled to be­gin on Sep­tem­ber 8, un­til fur­ther no­tice.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that at least 17 stu­dents who reg­is­tered for the cours­es were in­formed on Thurs­day.

The cours­es af­fect­ed are NURS 150: In­tro­duc­tion to Pro­fes­sion­al De­vel­op­ment, NURS 156: Health Pro­mo­tion and Main­te­nance, NURS 115: Nurs­ing Prac­tice, ENAP 105: Com­mu­ni­ca­tion for Nurs­ing As­sis­tants, BI­OL 109: In­tro­duc­tion to Hu­man Anato­my and Phys­i­ol­o­gy, and ENAP 111: Clin­i­cal Practicum.

Ac­cord­ing to the in­sti­tu­tion, the de­ci­sion fol­lows cor­re­spon­dence from the Nurs­ing Coun­cil of Trinidad and To­ba­go ad­vis­ing that the pro­gramme should not com­mence un­til for­mal ap­proval has been grant­ed. COSTAATT said the late com­mu­ni­ca­tion left it with no al­ter­na­tive but to post­pone the start of class­es.

Pres­i­dent of the Nurs­ing Coun­cil of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Corey George, said that as soon as he be­came aware of the pro­gramme, he ad­vised the Col­lege—through its pres­i­dent, Dr Kei­th Nurse—on Wednes­day that train­ing must not com­mence un­til ap­proval has been grant­ed by both the Nurs­ing Coun­cil and the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“This puts our pub­lic at risk since all nurs­ing and mid­wifery per­son­nel must re­ceive train­ing us­ing ap­proved cur­ric­u­la,” George said.

He added, “It was re­port­ed that ap­pli­cants were in­ter­viewed and of­fered let­ters of ac­cep­tance in Ju­ly. They are due to pay reg­is­tra­tion fees to­mor­row and make out-of-pock­et pay­ments for the pro­gramme.”

COSTAATT, which went through the reac­cred­i­ta­tion process in Ju­ly, said stu­dents who paid fees will be con­tact­ed re­gard­ing re­funds.

George al­so dis­closed that the Coun­cil met with the Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad, on Au­gust 5, where both par­ties agreed to work to­geth­er on nurs­ing and mid­wifery ed­u­ca­tion.

“A part of this dis­cus­sion fo­cused on ad­dress­ing is­sues re­lat­ed to the de­liv­ery of nurs­ing and mid­wifery ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes at COSTAATT and the stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of the cur­ricu­lum,” he said.

In May, it was re­vealed that stu­dents from Trinidad and To­ba­go had the worst grades in the re­gion, with a 50 per cent fail­ure rate over­all. George said all schools of nurs­ing were asked to re­view their cur­ric­u­la and bring them in­to align­ment with the do­mains set by the CXC RENR.

He said both the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies School of Nurs­ing and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean were in the process of re­view­ing their cur­ric­u­la. How­ev­er, he said there was a chal­lenge with the COSTAATT School of Nurs­ing, which had yet to re­view or sub­mit its cur­ricu­lum to the Coun­cil for as­sess­ment.

At the end of the last se­mes­ter, stu­dents al­so raised con­cerns over the sud­den shift from on­line to face-to-face class­es. They ar­gued that cer­tain lab and nurs­ing cours­es could still be ef­fec­tive­ly taught on­line, and that the change would cre­ate dif­fi­cul­ties for full-time work­ers, those with tight sched­ules, or long com­mutes.

The Coun­cil said nurs­ing and mid­wifery ed­u­ca­tion are not de­signed to func­tion as pure­ly on­line or part-time pro­grammes, since they re­quire hands-on, skills-based train­ing to en­sure grad­u­ates are com­pe­tent and pre­pared to de­liv­er safe, qual­i­ty care to the pub­lic.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad, who said he will look in­to the mat­ter.