Public Health Minister Dr George Norton has recommended, based on the report submitted to his office by the Nursing Council, that there should be no resitting of the nurses’ final examination, a health official has disclosed.
The report revealed no evidence that the examination should be rewritten, the official explained.
Nurses who sat the Clinical and Functional examination in October were informed by the Principal Tutor of the Georgetown School of Nursing that nursing students may have to resit 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.
Investigations are ongoing to identify the person(s) who may have been responsible for the leak of examination papers before the sitting and assessment of 250 nursing students on October 19 and 20, 2016.
On Thursday Minister Norton stated that a particular officer, who was assigned to the case by the Minister through the Commissioner of Police, did not provide updates on the matter.
The investigations will be directed to the General Nursing Council since examinations are prepared under their purview and persons responsible for the test papers’ compromise may be within that system. When guilty parties have been identified, they will be subjected to face the law.
When the National Health Policy Committee of the Public Health Ministry met with the Chairman of the Nursing Council, the Director of the Division of Health Science Education and the Principal Tutor of the Georgetown Nursing School on November 14, nothing substantial came out of their meeting.
Subsequently, the council was scheduled to meet on Friday last to arrive at a decision on the issue.
According to the official, the minister has informed the council to go ahead and mark the papers.
“The report in itself is damning and revealing… I must say the students have a strong point and so far they haven’t found anything to show that the papers were compromised,” the official said. (Guyana Times)
