It has been brought to the attention of the Alliance For Change that the quality of training at the Georgetown School of Nursing is being compromised. The AFC was informed that by accepting more students into the nursing school that can be comfortably accommodated, the Ministry of Health is actually forcing lecturers into a position where they cannot provide adequate supervision of the students.
It is clear that the government is only interested in showing large numbers but in doing so they are sacrificing basic quality for quantity.
This situation does not bode well for the future of health care in Guyana as in a few years, these students will become Registered Nurses but they will lack the competence to provide quality health care. Such a situation will result in many patients in the future not being properly looked after and possibly resulting in deaths.
This is a very grave situation and the AFC is calling for the immediate review of how the nursing programme is being run.
Among the issues the AFC want to see addressed are:
- Conditions of the sanitary facilities
- Conditions of the classrooms including seating, ventilation and teaching supplies
- Availability of competent and qualified lectures
- Ratio of lecturers to students to ensure it complies with international standards
- The availability of adequate clinical instructors and adequate time allotted for clinical training of students.
- Availability of internet access for student nurses
Continuing to run the nursing programme the way it is being run right now is equivalent to a national health crisis in the making. The people of Guyana will be the ones to suffer from this. [END]
