Trinidad and Tobago Registered Nurses Association
Improving Health Care from within: Nurses empowering Nurses
PRESIDENT of the TT Nursing Association Idi Stuart says the ambulances under the regional health authorities
(RHAs) are not properly equipped for transporting patients and nurses/ attendants. He said only the EHS
ambulances followed proper protocol for safety.
Thursday, December 29 2016
THE MIGRATION of Caribbean nurses to greener pastures in the UK and US is a decades-old reality, yet could be now re-fuelled by a fresh impetus of “pull” and “push” factors that TT must keenly engage for the sake of our health system. A warning note was sounded by TT Registered Nurses Association president, Idi Stewart, who revealed a new thrust by the UK to recruit Caribbean nurses in light of the impending Brexit arrangements, which logic suggests will lead the UK to shift its sourcing of nurses from the eastern and southern European nations - from whence 29 percent of NHS nurses now originate to the formerly-favoured Commonwealth including the Caribbean.
CAROL M ATROO Tuesday, December 27 2016
It has been a burning issue here in Trinidad and Tobago...a shortage of nurses within the health sector and a brain drain that has local nurses seeking employment abroad.
Since being elected two months ago as president of the Trinidad and Tobago Registered Nursing Association (TTRNA), Idi Stewart said he would be looking into keeping local nurses here within the health system.
Speaking with Newsday yesterday, Stewart said during this Christmas season nurses have been fulfilling their duties, with just a few exceptions. “I can’t say what the figures are, but there has not been any drastic shortage as far as I have heard, or any fall outs. Most of the nurses came out to work, there may have been one or two on a shift but nothing drastic.
SEAN DOUGL AS Thursda y, December 29 2016
NURSES continue to be under attack from patients at the nation’s hospitals, with no proper form of compensation for their injuries. This is the picture of the profession painted by TT Registered Nurses Association president, Idi Stewart, who vowed action in 2017 to highlight such cases. In one incident last month, a patient receiving emergency treatment bit the finger of the nurse who was treating her at the Accident and Emergency Unit of the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Mount Hope.
Stewart said the biting incident had never been reported in the media.
“It was not a psychiatric patient but a female patient who was going through certain things and who was a little unstable,” he related.
“The nurse and the doctors tried to restrain her and she bit the nurse’s finger.” Stewart lamented that there is no compensation for such injuries.
“The RHAs (Regional Health Authorities) tell you to seek workmen’s compensation but that sum is woefully inadequate and it is a long, drawn-out process”.