RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh has shut­down al­le­ga­tions that there is an ex­o­dus of lo­cal nurs­es which may one day re­sult in a short­age in T&T to help the coun­try’s health in­sti­tu­tions.

Speak­ing to the Guardian Me­dia while at­tend­ing a Women’s Health func­tion at the Women’s Hos­pi­tal of the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, on Sun­day, Deyals­ingh de­nied the re­cent claims made by the pres­i­dent of the T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion, Idi Stu­art.

“That is not cor­rect. Every time that ques­tion comes up and we pro­duce the num­bers, the num­bers don’t sup­port any mass mi­gra­tion of nurs­es. It doesn’t,” Deyals­ingh said.

He added that with re­spect to any im­proved salaries for our lo­cal nurs­es, “Those dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer.”

Re­cent­ly, there has been rig­or­ous re­cruit­ment for nurs­es here by in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies and there are said to be a few more ex­er­cis­es in the near fu­ture.

Last week, dur­ing an in­ter­view with the Guardian Me­dia, a nurse with close to 20 years of ser­vice, was one of those who at­tend­ed a re­cruit­ment sem­i­nar host­ed by Avant Health­care Pro­fes­sion­als on Thurs­day.

The Mi­a­mi-based firm re­cruit­ment’s ex­er­cise took place at the Ball­room of Trinidad Hilton and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre where they of­fered to “change the lives of T&Ts health­care pro­fes­sion­als by help­ing them achieve their Amer­i­can Dream.

The com­pa­ny rou­tine­ly trav­els to more than 70 coun­tries around the world and said lo­cal nurs­es of­ten do well with their pack­aged mi­gra­tion to the Unit­ed States.

Nurs­es, who at­tend­ed Thurs­day’s ses­sion said they want­ed to see what Avant had to of­fer since they’ve been told leav­ing T&T could give them the im­proved qual­i­ty of life they are seek­ing.

Khadi­ja, a nurse with more than 13 years of ex­pe­ri­ence who wants a high­er stan­dard of liv­ing, said she was ea­ger to hear what Avant has to say.

Car­la wants is her own home, which she can­not af­ford on her nurse’s salary of about $12,000 a month.

Avant re­cruits for hos­pi­tals in the Unit­ed States and promis­es to “change the lives of our clients through strong staffing part­ner­ships that en­able them to over­come staffing short­ages and meet their pa­tient care ob­jec­tives.”

How­ev­er, they may be do­ing that at the ex­pense of hos­pi­tals across the four Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHA) in Trinidad which are con­sis­tent­ly un­able to meet their staffing quo­ta ac­cord­ing to pres­i­dent of the T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion, Idi Stu­art.

Stu­art, dur­ing an in­ter­view with the Guardian Me­dia last Thurs­day, said To­ba­go is the on­ly RHA that has met its staff fig­ures, even though the stan­dard is based on 2013 cal­cu­la­tions. Stu­art al­so said the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket is in nurs­es’ favour, but the Min­istry of Health is do­ing noth­ing to keep nurs­es or pay them prop­er­ly.

ICN is the In­ter­na­tion­al Nurs­ing Coun­cil, and Stu­art is re­fer­ring to the 2020 State of the World Nurs­ing Re­port com­piled from da­ta from 191 coun­tries in­clud­ing T&T.

The re­port ad­vis­es that “coun­tries ex­pe­ri­enc­ing ex­ces­sive loss­es of their nurs­ing work­force through out-mi­gra­tion should con­sid­er mit­i­gat­ing mea­sures and re­ten­tion pack­ages, such as im­prov­ing salaries (and pay eq­ui­ty) and work­ing con­di­tions, cre­at­ing pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, and al­low­ing nurs­es to work to their full scope of ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing.”

Stu­art agreed, but said: “The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go is not im­ple­ment­ing any of those rec­om­men­da­tions.”

These in­clude en­sur­ing all en­try-lev­el nurs­es are trained to a de­gree.

Stu­art said the min­istry is do­ing this to keep en­try-lev­el salaries low.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the cur­rent sys­tem makes con­tin­u­ing ed­u­ca­tion un­at­trac­tive for nurs­es. Doc­tors are sup­port­ed fi­nan­cial­ly and giv­en in­duce­ments to seek spe­cialised train­ing and fur­ther pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment. The same is not of­fered to nurs­es.

The pol­i­cy al­so rec­om­mend­ed that all hos­pi­tals be out­fit­ted with a day­care cen­tre for the chil­dren of staff. Too of­ten nurs­es have to miss work be­cause they do not have child cov­er, es­pe­cial­ly when they have to work unso­cia­ble hours.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, the CEOs of the North-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) and the East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (ER­HA) both claimed in­ter­na­tion­al re­cruit­ment is not un­usu­al and they are not neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed by staff short­ages.

ER­HA CEO Ronald Tsoi-A-Fatt said in­ter­na­tion­al re­cruiters come all the time.

Act­ing CEO of the NWRHA An­tho­ny Blake was un­able to give ex­act fig­ures but de­nied that wards are short-staffed.

Stu­art said more re­cruiters are ex­pect­ed in T&T in the com­ing weeks, in­clud­ing a team from the Unit­ed King­dom’s Na­tion­al Health­care Ser­vice (NHS).

Deyals­ingh, on the com­mem­o­ra­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, said it is time for women to fo­cus on be­ing proac­tive rather than re­ac­tive.

He said women are so busy with com­pet­ing needs that they tend to put their health on the back burn­er.

“Choose your­self. Get screened ear­ly for the typ­i­cal things that af­flict women. Di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion but most im­por­tant­ly cer­vi­cal can­cer and breast can­cer, breast can­cer is the num­ber one killer of women with can­cers,” he said.