JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

Jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Dis­rup­tions were re­port­ed at sev­er­al pub­lic health fa­cil­i­ties on the first day of “to­tal nurs­ing” in­dus­tri­al ac­tion, in­clud­ing at the Barataria Health Cen­tre and the tem­po­rary scal­ing down of ser­vices at the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment of the Mt Hope Women’s Hos­pi­tal.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex yes­ter­day, T&T Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art said the de­vel­op­ments at the Women’s Hos­pi­tal were un­for­tu­nate.

“We re­al­ly re­gret that tran­spir­ing, but it again high­lights how short-staffed some of our wards are. We em­pathise with the pop­u­la­tion who had to move be­tween a num­ber of in­sti­tu­tions through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go, but in the end there will be a suc­cess­ful out­come, not on­ly for staff but for pa­tients them­selves,” he said.

Stu­art said he had been in­formed that the A&E de­part­ment at Mt Hope was ef­fec­tive­ly im­pact­ed by a merg­ing of ser­vices. How­ev­er, sources in­di­cat­ed that while the de­part­ment was not for­mal­ly closed, one of two op­er­at­ing the­atres was not utilised due to staff short­ages linked to nurs­es stay­ing away from work.

In re­sponse, Stu­art said he was lat­er ad­vised that A&E and the birthing unit had been com­bined, which in prac­tice amount­ed to a shut­down of full A&E func­tion­al­i­ty.

At the Barataria Health Cen­tre, about 12 nurs­es re­port­ed­ly stayed away from work on Tues­day, leav­ing four se­nior nurs­ing staff to man­age op­er­a­tions. This re­sult­ed in de­lays of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 min­utes in ser­vice de­liv­ery.

Tues­day marked day one of a two-month in­dus­tri­al ac­tion plan, in­tend­ed to pres­sure Gov­ern­ment for a re­sponse to long­stand­ing salary ne­go­ti­a­tions. Nurs­es are cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing on 2013 wage rates and do not re­ceive over­time pay, un­like oth­er cat­e­gories of pub­lic sec­tor work­ers.

Stu­art said that at the end of the two-month pe­ri­od, nurs­es will move to strict ad­her­ence to a one-nurse-to-four-pa­tient ra­tio pol­i­cy. He added that oth­er health­care work­ers have al­so in­di­cat­ed their in­ten­tion to take sim­i­lar ac­tion over un­re­solved con­cerns.

He ex­pressed hope that es­ca­la­tion could be avoid­ed but warned that out­comes would de­pend on Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse.

“We would know if it’s in vain by the read­ing of the mid-year bud­get re­view, be­cause that would be a clear in­di­ca­tion to all health­care work­ers if the Gov­ern­ment is lis­ten­ing to us and if they re­al­ly care about health­care work­ers,” he said.

“And we un­der­stand if the Gov­ern­ment shows no mer­cy and no care, then health­care work­ers will have to do what they feel is just.”

At the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, nurs­es gave mixed ac­counts of the im­pact of the in­dus­tri­al ac­tion. Some said they were re­fus­ing to ex­ceed safe pa­tient loads, cit­ing their pro­fes­sion­al oath to do no harm, while ques­tion­ing the fea­si­bil­i­ty of man­ag­ing more than six or sev­en pa­tients per nurse un­der cur­rent con­di­tions.

Oth­ers com­plained of hav­ing to work be­yond sched­uled shifts due to staff short­ages. Some health­care work­ers said they had not ob­served sig­nif­i­cant changes in nurs­ing op­er­a­tions but ex­pressed sup­port for the push for im­proved wages and con­di­tions.

Stu­art al­so raised con­cerns about am­bu­lance ser­vices, al­leg­ing de­fi­cien­cies in both pub­lic and pri­vate op­er­a­tions. He said dis­cus­sions with work­ers at the Trans­port Branch of the EWM­SC high­light­ed a lack of safe­ty equip­ment, in­clud­ing seat­belts in some ve­hi­cles, while pri­vate­ly op­er­at­ed am­bu­lances may lack ad­e­quate in­sur­ance cov­er­age in the event of ac­ci­dents. He said the mat­ter will be brought to the at­ten­tion of Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke.

Calls and mes­sages to Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe went unan­swered up to press time.