Gopeesingh rejects TTNNA claims over nurse exits, ward conditions

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

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The North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) has strong­ly re­ject­ed claims cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia that three re­cent­ly hired nurs­es re­signed due to con­di­tions at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) in Mt Hope, in­sist­ing the de­par­tures were un­re­lat­ed to the new­ly opened Adult Med­ical Ward.

Re­spond­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion’s (TTNNA) claims, NCRHA chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh said the res­ig­na­tions did not in­volve nurs­es as­signed to the ward.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Gopeesingh said, “Three nurs­es re­signed, none from the new ward. One got em­ploy­ment at SWRHA as she was from South, the oth­er was do­ing her Mas­ters, had some fam­i­ly is­sues and re­signed, the third nurse al­so from South got called from SWRHA and she took the job.”

His com­ments came as the NCRHA is­sued a me­dia re­lease on Sat­ur­day dis­miss­ing the claims as false and mis­lead­ing, and re­ject­ing any sug­ges­tion that the res­ig­na­tions were linked to the op­er­a­tions or con­di­tions of the Adult Med­ical Ward at the EWM­SC.

The au­thor­i­ty said none of the nurs­es ref­er­enced in the so­cial me­dia claims was as­signed to or worked at the ward. It added that the res­ig­na­tions stemmed from per­son­al cir­cum­stances, em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in an­oth­er Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty clos­er to home, and de­ci­sions to pur­sue fur­ther aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies.

The NCRHA said the cir­cu­lat­ing in­for­ma­tion was in­tend­ed to cre­ate alarm and mis­trust among staff and the pub­lic, and con­demned what it de­scribed as mis­in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing the mat­ter.

It urged the pub­lic to re­ly on of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion re­gard­ing is­sues af­fect­ing the au­thor­i­ty. The NCRHA did not iden­ti­fy the nurs­es in­volved or state when the res­ig­na­tions took ef­fect.

The state­ment fol­lows claims by the TTNNA that three nurs­es re­signed less than a month af­ter be­ing hired, cit­ing poor work­ing con­di­tions and un­safe staffing lev­els.

The TTNNA al­so ques­tioned re­cruit­ment fig­ures, say­ing it be­lieved few­er than the 61 nurs­es re­port­ed had ac­tu­al­ly been hired.

In its state­ment, the TTNNA fur­ther al­leged that some new hires were as­signed to the Adult Med­ical Ward 4, which it said was pre­vi­ous­ly con­fig­ured as a psy­chi­atric ward, and raised con­cerns about train­ing and pa­tient care con­di­tions.

Mean­while, on­go­ing con­cerns have al­so been raised by men­tal health staff about the re­lo­ca­tion of psy­chi­atric ser­vices from the EWM­SC to Ari­ma, in­clud­ing re­duced bed ca­pac­i­ty, staffing short­ages, and safe­ty risks for both pa­tients and work­ers.

The work­ers, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said the orig­i­nal ward held 25 beds while the new ward on­ly holds ten.

They added that the psych ward at Ari­ma is not on a ground floor mak­ing it a safe­ty risk for the pa­tients.

“They (Ari­ma) hav­ing is­sues ad­mit­ting sui­cide pa­tients. We still have a whole catch­ment of pa­tients that can­not go to Ari­ma, if the ten beds hap­pen to be avail­able.”

An­oth­er work­er said over­time was dis­al­lowed on the ward since it was “down­sized.”

The work­ers said they need ad­e­quate staff as that ward can be volatile with many of the nurs­es be­ing women. Added to that, there is no dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion be­tween males and fe­males gen­er­al­ly on the psych ward, the of­fi­cers said, mak­ing man­age­ment of such wards dif­fi­cult.