Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art says more than half of the stu­dents who sit the Re­gion­al Ex­am­i­na­tion for Nurse Reg­is­tra­tion (RENR) fail the ex­ams.

“In Trinidad, there’s a 50 per cent fail­ure rate and it’s re­al­ly un­ac­cept­able and we need to plug that void,” he said yes­ter­day.

Stu­art said they were sur­prised by the fig­ures pre­sent­ed at a Min­istry of Health nurs­ing sem­i­nar last month, es­pe­cial­ly when they learned that Trinidad and To­ba­go stu­dents were per­form­ing the worst in the re­gion.

“We were re­al­ly alarmed. We al­ways ex­pect­ed their high fail­ure rates, eh, and that we were not do­ing as well as our coun­ter­parts in the re­gion, but it was glar­ing when that in­for­ma­tion was pre­sent­ed to us,” he ex­plained.

Speak­ing at the launch of the first Na­tion­al Nurs­es Cred­it Union and Co­op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety at War­ren Road, St Au­gus­tine, yes­ter­day, Stu­art blamed the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of nurs­ing hos­tels and stipends for the high fail­ure rate among stu­dents. He said in the past, there used to be these ac­com­mo­da­tions for stu­dents at var­i­ous hos­pi­tals, but that’s no more.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, every sin­gle one of them has been knocked down, bro­ken down and al­lowed to be used as car park­ing spaces,” he said.

Stu­art said if the hos­tels are re­opened, it can help stu­dents stay close to the med­ical in­sti­tu­tion where they are com­plet­ing their stud­ies.

He added that nurs­ing stu­dents used to get a month­ly stipend ($1,000) to as­sist with books and uni­forms, but that was al­so dis­con­tin­ued at some in­sti­tu­tions.

“On­ly COSTAATT cur­rent­ly re­ceives this nurs­ing stipend ... and sec­ond­ly, we would hope they in­crease the nurs­ing stipend be­cause it is very small,” he said.

Nurs­ing lec­tur­er Mau­reen Gid­dings-Es­t­wick al­so called on se­nior nurs­es to as­sist stu­dents.

“I am putting out an ap­peal this af­ter­noon to ask you all to take the nurs­ing stu­dents un­der your wings and do some more in­tro­spec­tion and find out how we can put them fur­ther,” she said.

Gid­dings-Es­t­wick said this was the third or fourth time T&T had per­formed so poor­ly in the RENR.

Stu­art, mean­while, called on the new Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe to ho­n­our the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion’s promise to in­crease salaries from the ba­sic pay of $7,000.

In April, then prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young in­struct­ed that wage talks com­mence be­tween the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer, Daryl Din­di­al and the TTNNA.

Stu­art said they of­fi­cial­ly wrote to Bo­doe to re­quest a meet­ing last Wednes­day, but want­ed to al­so un­of­fi­cial­ly ask to meet with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar since they be­lieve she needs to hear their plights di­rect­ly from them.

“The Min­is­ter of Health was not car­ry­ing back the in­for­ma­tion to re­al­ly ad­dress our con­cerns the way we want to or even at all,” he said.

The pres­i­dent said nurs­es are still work­ing on 2013 salaries, so it’s dif­fi­cult to af­ford hous­ing or even get a loan. The cred­it union, he said, should help his ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4000 mem­bers.

“One of the main goals of this in­sti­tu­tion, be­cause nurs­ing per­son­nel are so poor­ly paid, we have to con­tin­u­ous­ly find a num­ber of ways to be able to sup­ple­ment their salaries, they are un­able to go to the nor­mal fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and qual­i­fy for a mort­gage, a car,” he ex­plained.

“We have a num­ber of so­cial mea­sures in place, so when nurs­es fall on hard times, when they house burn down, we have a whole so­cio-eco­nom­ic com­mit­tee which will pro­vide sup­port,” Stu­art said.