The Ministry of Public Health (MOPH) has issued an advisory confirming that the student nurses who will be required to resit the Clinical and Functional examination, due to the papers being leaked, will do so on February 21, 2017 (next week Tuesday).
According to the advisory, the examinations will be written at Critchlow Labour College (CLC), Woolford Avenue, Thomas Lands, Georgetown at 9:00 hrs.
Public Heath Minister, Volda Lawrence, had announced last week Monday that the 150 nurses who sat the Clinical and Functional examination in October, 2016 will be required to re-write the examination.
Lawrence stated that after discussions, the Ministry of Education will now be acting on behalf of the Health Ministry to “engage its personnel to prepare the multiple choice questions”, and “to administer those questions on the 21st of February.”
The Minister stated that following this, persons will be recruited by the Education Ministry to mark the “essay part of the questions” so as to allow results for the examination to be presented on the February 28, 2017, to the Ministry.
The declaration of the results for the students will be done no later than March 2, she promised.
The Public Health Minister also told media operatives that leading up to this period, the Nursing Council has agreed to provide tutoring for those students who will be re-sitting the examination.“…Because not all of those students who wrote the examinations did both parts, so it would be only those students who would have written the multiple choice aspect of the examination,” she said.
With regards to the investigation as to who leaked the examination papers, the Minister did not disclose much information, but indicated that the investigations are still ongoing.
However, he predecessor, Dr George Norton had informed the media at the 2016 end of the year presser that the Police investigations so far had revealed that the leak may have come from those responsible for putting together the test.
After writing their exams in October of last year, nurses were informed by the Principal Tutor of the Georgetown School of Nursing that they may have to re-sit the examinations since it had been discovered that test papers may have been leaked before the examination was written.
Nurses from the New Amsterdam School of Nursing were the first to react to the decision and protested that they will not resit the exam.
The investigations were said to be directed to the General Nursing Council since examinations are prepared under their purview and persons responsible for compromising the test papers may be within that system.
It was disclosed that when the guilty parties have been identified, they will face the law.
