Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) has claimed a ca­su­al­ty in its on­go­ing in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions bat­tle with the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA). 

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, TTNNA pres­i­dent Idi Stew­art claimed that a se­nior doc­tor, who heads a de­part­ment at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope, died sud­den­ly af­ter com­plet­ing an ex­tend­ed shift over the East­er long week­end. 

While Stew­art de­clined to spec­u­late over the ex­act cause of death, he sug­gest­ed that it may have been as a re­sult of him and his col­leagues be­ing forced to fill gaps left by the ac­tion tak­en by his mem­ber­ship over the past few weeks. 

Stu­art said: “This demon­strates the ex­treme stress, the ex­treme anx­i­ety, the ex­treme work­load, of­ten be­yond hu­man lim­its, be­yond sus­tain­able lim­its, if this con­tin­ues. And sad­ly, it has caused the loss of one of our col­leagues.” 

While Stu­art com­mend­ed doc­tors for at­tempt­ing to pro­vide ac­cept­able med­ical care in the face of con­sis­tent nurs­ing short­ages even be­fore the ac­tion, he sug­gest­ed that such would ul­ti­mate­ly be fu­tile. 

“Def­i­nite­ly, there is no prac­ti­cal way that doc­tors can re­al­ly be able to cov­er that short­fall that now ex­ists,” Stu­art said.

“So now doc­tors are cry­ing out of what is hap­pen­ing, be­cause they are be­ing pushed to their lim­its,” he added. 

The as­so­ci­a­tion sent con­do­lences to the doc­tor’s fam­i­ly in a so­cial me­dia post yes­ter­day evening.

“This trag­ic mo­ment al­so forces us to re­flect on the im­mense pres­sures fac­ing our health care pro­fes­sion­als,” it said.

“In­creas­ing work­loads, staff short­ages and mount­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive strain have cre­at­ed an en­vi­ron­ment that many have qui­et­ly strug­gled to en­dure,” it added.

Stu­art claimed that the as­so­ci­a­tion was heart­ened by the feed­back from its mem­bers to its call to boy­cott the nurs­ing “pool” sys­tem em­ployed across pub­lic health­care in­sti­tu­tions. 

Un­der the ex­tra-du­ty arrange­ment, nurs­es are called up­on to vol­un­tar­i­ly fill staffing gaps in var­i­ous de­part­ments at a rate of $15 an hour. 

On Sat­ur­day, Stu­art and the as­so­ci­a­tion called on nurs­es to refuse to par­tic­i­pate in the sys­tem and in­stead de­mand high­er over­time if they are re­quest­ed to work past their eight-hour shifts. 

Stu­art again took aim at NCRHA chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh, who sug­gest­ed that there was cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ty with­in the sys­tem, with some nurs­es tak­ing home be­tween $60,000 and $80,000 over a three-month pe­ri­od based on it. 

He said he was con­fi­dent that the al­le­ga­tions were base­less. 

“Not a sin­gle per­son from the nurs­ing com­mu­ni­ty would be charged or would be held for some fraud­u­lent be­hav­iour,” he said. 

He not­ed that the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties should have been aware that they would be re­quired to make sig­nif­i­cant ex­tra du­ty pay­ments due to long-stand­ing va­can­cies for nurs­es, for which the “pool” sys­tem is de­signed to ad­dress.

“Every sin­gle per­son would have had to have ap­proval. The very man­age­ment, who wants to take away the in­come, would have had to ap­prove it. So they ful­ly well know that these nurs­es ac­tu­al­ly work. There’s no ghost here,” Stu­art said. 

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Gopeesingh and Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe for com­ment, but they did not an­swer calls made to their cell­phones.