[www.inewsguyana.com] – Minister of Health Dr. Bheri Ramsaran said that the large percentage of nurses failing the Professional Nursing Programme examination is a result of those who were repeating it.
He explained that there has been improvement across the board in the different sections of the papers, (four written papers and a practical examination). However, this sitting of the examination saw a total of 19 individuals repeating the course after failing the last exams and have once again failed.
Minister Ramsaran added that the four recognised Nursing Schools in Guyana have shown a lot of improvement in individual areas. He said that this can be broken down to 83% in functional nursing paper 1 and 27% in paper 2, 61% passes in clinical nursing paper 1 and 70% in paper 2 along with 79% in practicals. However, when the grades were combined it showed that some individuals were strong in one area while weak in another resulting in them failing.
The Charles Rosa Nursing School in Linden has shown some form of improvement as the results show a 92% pass in functional nursing paper 1 as opposed to 60 % in 2013 and 46% in paper 2 as opposed to 20% last year.
Also in the area of clinical nursing there have been improvements as well; paper 1 saw 50% of the students passing as against 23% last year and paper 2, saw a 72% success as against 30%. This school also showed improvement in the practical exam resulting in an 83% pass as opposed to 57% last year.
Meanwhile the New Amsterdam Nursing School saw 100% passes in functional nursing paper 1 and 49% in paper 2, while in clinical nursing it saw 46% passes in paper 1, 76% in paper 2 and 46% in practicals.
However, the majority of failing students came from the Georgetown School of Nursing with the poorest area being a 12% pass in functional nursing paper 2. According to the Minister, this resulted in the overall pass percentage being this low as it is totaled as a whole.
[Extracted and Modified from GINA]
