Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

The Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, and Ap­plied Arts of Trinidad and To­ba­go (COSTAATT) says the Nurs­ing Coun­cil has agreed to have its ed­u­ca­tion com­mit­tee re­view the sub­mis­sions made by the col­lege for its Ad­vanced Cer­tifi­cate in Nurs­ing As­sis­tant Pro­gramme.

In a press re­lease, COSTAATT said the agree­ment was made dur­ing a meet­ing on Mon­day.

Last week, the Nurs­ing Coun­cil ad­vised COSTAATT that the pro­gramme, which was set to be­gin on Sep­tem­ber 8, must not com­mence un­til the coun­cil gives ap­proval.

Vice Pres­i­dent of Aca­d­e­m­ic Af­fairs Dr Naseem Koy­lass said the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil ap­proved the pro­gramme on No­vem­ber 25, 2024, de­spite sub­mit­ting all re­quired cur­ricu­lum doc­u­men­ta­tion and sev­er­al re­vised ver­sions to the Nurs­ing Coun­cil since Feb­ru­ary 2024.

The in­sti­tu­tion said its most re­cent sub­mis­sion was on June 17, 2025.

Days be­fore the new se­mes­ter be­gan, COSTAATT in­formed at least 17 reg­is­tered stu­dents that the pro­gramme had been post­poned un­til fur­ther no­tice.

COSTAATT said it was able to con­firm dur­ing the meet­ing with both the Nurs­ing and the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cils on Mon­day that it has con­sis­tent­ly fol­lowed all due process­es.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) Idi Stu­art called on the Nurs­ing Coun­cil to com­plete this re­view in the month of Sep­tem­ber to pre­serve what is left of the school term.

Stu­art said it was trou­bling that the process that be­gan in Feb­ru­ary 2024 was still on­go­ing. He said his as­so­ci­a­tion had writ­ten to Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad ask­ing for a full re­port of the cir­cum­stances that led to the stop­ping of the pro­gramme and what was caus­ing the de­lay in the ap­proval of the spe­cial­ist nurs­ing cours­es and to re­it­er­ate the as­so­ci­a­tion’s long-stand­ing po­si­tion that the nurs­ing de­part­ment ought to be moved out of COSTAATT and in­to the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T.

“There is cur­rent­ly no oth­er nurs­ing school that trains nurs­ing as­sis­tants and spe­cial­ist nurs­es, there­by re­sult­ing in a con­tin­ued spi­ralling deficit in these cat­e­gories of nurs­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go, lead­ing to re­duced qual­i­ty of care to pa­tients,” he ex­plained.

In May, the cours­es un­der re­view 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.