KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Al­though in­dus­tri­al ac­tion by nurs­es has be­gun to af­fect ser­vices at sev­er­al pub­lic health in­sti­tu­tions, rel­a­tives of pa­tients at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal say care there has re­mained large­ly sta­ble.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day and ob­served a steady pres­ence of nurs­es across mul­ti­ple wards, with rel­a­tives and pa­tients re­port­ing lit­tle to no dis­rup­tion in ser­vice. Those at­tend­ing out­pa­tient clin­ics al­so said they en­coun­tered the usu­al com­ple­ment of med­ical staff.

Shameed Ali, who vis­it­ed his wife dur­ing morn­ing vis­it­ing hours, said he no­ticed noth­ing out of the or­di­nary.

“When I went on the ward, every­thing was nor­mal. I did not see any dis­crep­an­cy,” Ali said.

He ex­plained that his wife was ad­mit­ted on Tues­day evening and had not raised any con­cerns about the lev­el of care up to yes­ter­day.

Reesa Ram­lo­gan-Jod­ha shared a sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ence af­ter her hus­band was hos­pi­talised ear­li­er this week and un­der­went an emer­gency pro­ce­dure on Wednes­day. He re­mained ward­ed yes­ter­day, re­cov­er­ing. She said while she was not aware of nurs­es ad­her­ing to any strict pa­tient-ra­tio mea­sures, she had no com­plaints about his treat­ment.

“The care that my hus­band is re­ceiv­ing is sec­ond to none. He is giv­en the at­ten­tion that he needs. He is be­ing tak­en care of,” Ram­lo­gan-Jod­ha said.

She not­ed, how­ev­er, that there ap­peared to be a slight­ly small­er num­ber of nurs­es on the ward, but said it had not af­fect­ed pa­tient care.

Meena Bharat, who has been vis­it­ing her 85-year-old sis­ter over the past three days, al­so praised the at­ten­tive­ness of nurs­ing staff.

“She has been get­ting through. The nurse there is re­al­ly nice and at­tends to her. Any­thing we ask for, she comes and as­sists,” Bharat said, adding that if in­dus­tri­al ac­tion was tak­ing place, it had not af­fect­ed her sis­ter’s treat­ment.

Sim­i­lar ac­counts came from staff at the Princes Town Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where op­er­a­tions were de­scribed as nor­mal, with nurs­es re­port­ing for du­ty through­out the week. The sit­u­a­tion at these fa­cil­i­ties con­trasts with dis­rup­tions re­port­ed across the pub­lic health sys­tem.

The T&T Nurs­es’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) says the de­vel­op­ments high­light long­stand­ing staffing short­ages, with some pa­tients be­ing redi­rect­ed be­tween in­sti­tu­tions and de­lays re­port­ed in ser­vice de­liv­ery. The in­dus­tri­al ac­tion is part of a two-month plan aimed at pres­sur­ing the Gov­ern­ment to re­solve pro­tract­ed salary ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Guardian Me­dia sought com­ment from the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty but was re­ferred to the Min­istry of Health. Ef­forts to ob­tain a re­sponse from Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe were un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.