Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) cel­e­brat­ed its En­rolled Nurs­ing As­sis­tants (ENAs) and Pa­tient Care As­sis­tants (PCAs) in com­mem­o­ra­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­sis­tants Day.

The recog­ni­tion cer­e­mo­ny, held at the San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal, ho­n­oured the in­valu­able con­tri­bu­tions of more than 900 PCAs and ENAs em­ployed across the SWRHA’s var­i­ous fa­cil­i­ties. Awards were al­so pre­sent­ed in recog­ni­tion of their roles in pa­tient care.

SWRHA CEO Dr She­vanand Goopeesingh ad­mit­ted that, for too long, the roles of PCAs and ENAs have been un­der­es­ti­mat­ed. Ac­knowl­edg­ing their ex­cep­tion­al con­tri­bu­tions, Goopeesingh said they form the back­bone of pa­tient-cen­tred care at both the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary lev­els of the health-care sys­tem.

Gen­er­al Nurse Man­ag­er Rachel Jar­dine-Bur­kette said that whether as­sist­ing pa­tients with their dai­ly needs, pro­vid­ing com­fort dur­ing dif­fi­cult mo­ments, sup­port­ing clin­i­cal pro­ce­dures or en­sur­ing con­ti­nu­ity of care, PCAs and ENAs play an in­valu­able role in the health-care jour­ney of every pa­tient served by the SWRHA.

She said, “From a nurs­ing per­spec­tive, your sup­port strength­ens the en­tire health-care team. Your com­mit­ment al­lows nurs­es and oth­er health-care pro­fes­sion­als to func­tion ef­fec­tive­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly, en­hanc­ing the pa­tient ex­pe­ri­ence and con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the qual­i­ty of care de­liv­ered across all of our fa­cil­i­ties.”

Awards were pre­sent­ed to the fol­low­ing em­ploy­ees:

ENA Kim Fer­di­nand — Most Out­stand­ing in Per­for­mance

ENA Josephine Lake — Pro­fes­sion­al Con­duct and Ethics

ENA Kavi­ta Ra­moutar Har­richa­ran — Com­pas­sion and Re­spect for Pa­tients

PCA Gaitri De­op­er­sad — Team­work and Col­lab­o­ra­tion

PCA Dere­cia Christo­pher — Pro­fes­sion­al Con­duct and Ethics

PCA Tine­ka Bai­ley — Most Out­stand­ing in Per­for­mance.