Nurs­es at the Port-of-Spain Ma­ter­ni­ty De­part­ment Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) are said to be dev­as­tat­ed over the deaths of in­fants at the unit which are now part of a le­gal bat­tle.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at his War­ren Street, St Au­gus­tine of­fice, pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) Idi Stu­art said the nurs­es, who treat­ed the in­fants, have been se­vere­ly im­pact­ed by the deaths.

Stu­art said nurs­es at the unit be­come sur­ro­gate par­ents for the in­fants as they would spend more time with the chil­dren than their par­ents and would have de­vel­oped a vest­ed in­ter­est in the well-be­ing of the in­fants.

“Some of the same emo­tions that the rel­a­tives are go­ing through are some of the same emo­tions the NICU nurse is go­ing through. While you will have one or two mem­bers of the pub­lic beat­ing up on the nurs­es, they are go­ing through their own tur­moil right now,” he said.

He added that while the nurs­es are pro­cess­ing their emo­tions, they still must work in over­crowd­ed and un­der­staffed hos­pi­tals.

Stu­art said in many cas­es nurs­es would have spent more time with the ba­bies at the NICU than their par­ents and they are “dev­as­tat­ed” by the turn of events.

Stu­art said the deaths of sev­en in­fants be­tween April 4 to 9 were un­prece­dent­ed and took place be­cause of a breach of pro­to­col. He called on nurs­es to stand their ground and refuse to do any­thing out­side of writ­ten pro­to­cols.

Com­ment­ing on the de­ci­sion by the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty to send Dr Dar­rel Jones on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave, he felt he was be­ing made a “scape­goat”. Jones is the lead of the NWRHA’s In­fec­tion Pre­ven­tion Coun­cil Unit. Stu­art said he ex­pects oth­er ju­nior staff to al­so be sent on leave and called for se­nior man­age­ment to feel the brunt of the pun­ish­ment.

“The as­so­ci­a­tion is not sat­is­fied (with Jones be­ing sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave). The as­so­ci­a­tion would have seen that they would have tar­get­ed that par­tic­u­lar of­fi­cer. That is not the in­di­vid­ual we would have want­ed to be placed first and fore­most on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave. We are close­ly mon­i­tor­ing this, and we ex­pect the au­thor­i­ty to place a cou­ple more peo­ple on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave,” he said.

Stu­art al­so warned that should any nurse be sus­pend­ed; the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal may have a mas­sive man­pow­er short­age.

“If any nurs­ing per­son­nel is sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave, you can end up with sig­nif­i­cant dis­rup­tion with­in that NICU de­part­ment and al­so the wider Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal,” he said.

He stressed that se­nior man­age­ment at the hos­pi­tal should be held re­spon­si­ble for the deaths.