By Fareeza Haniff
[www.inewsguyana.com] – The issue of Guyana’s growing rate of maternal deaths has not escaped the attention of President David Granger, who believes that it could be tackled effectively when nurses are better trained and equipped.
While admitting that better supervision is needed in the various hospitals, the Head of State opined that a lot of maternal cases have to do with the quality of training given to nurses.
During the programme, ‘The Public Interest’, the President made it clear that he is not blaming the nurses, as he pointed out the deficiencies in the country’s nurses training programme.
“Sometimes we have massive failures at the three training schools. The nurses themselves have complained, tutors have complained about the congestion, the absence of computers and text books. Others have complained about the quality of persons going into the training system. Some of them seem to have gone to collect the stipend and have no interest in becoming nurses,” President Granger explained.
He further noted that the issue can be solved by government ensuring that the best quality of persons are recruited into the profession and that nurses are paid a better salary.
“It is not a doctor problem, it is not a hospital problem, it is a nursing problem and we need to solve the problem by ensuring that we recruit the best quality of persons into that profession, we pay them better, that they’re trained under more strict regime and are allowed the practical sessions, which would prepare them for their profession and that once they become trained nurses, we treat them properly…We need to have happy nurses,” the President implored.
Minister of Public Health, Dr George Norton recently revealed that Guyana is likely to exceed the maximum Millennium Development Goal (MDG) limit of 11 maternal deaths this year, as it continues to struggle with the issue of late detection.
This is an investment that the government has to seriously consider, which is building better nursing schools for your nursing students. You will need a university system for the educational portion of the nursing students degree and well functioning hospitals for their clinical training. Guyana, sadly lacks both; thus you produce nurses with half-baked education and inefficient clinical experiences, to do highly skilled work that they ill-equipped to do.
My advise Mr. Norton, is to team up with international hospitals and universities with nursing programs that can send educators to help train your nursing students with the level of education that’s needed to be a nurse in this modern era.
Sad to report but some of the nurses with decades of experience are the ones that are ‘pigish’ and have the least patience with patients
Well trained nurses can lead to reduction in maternal deaths – President
Well trained people can reduce just about anything there is but not these PNC nurses whom sit there on their shifts with their little mirrors paint their ugly faces all day long. Do anyone think they care for the sick and those that are about to give birth.
One PNC nurse told me they come here with their big guts hollering their guts out getting baby but when they were lying flat on their backs doing their thing they enjoy it and they didnt ask for help then. The woman is sick.