Minister of Health Dr Bheri Ramsarran says the current overcrowding and improving the overall conditions at the Georgetown School of Nursing (GSN) will be resolved with “staggering of classes”, but his ministry is being met with “organization resistance”.
Ramsaran was at the time addressing the issue of overcrowding, at the city nursing school; both the Guyana Nurses Association (GNA) and the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) had publicly voiced concern about the physical state of the school and overcrowding among other issues.
The GPSU stated that for every batch of students taken in, there were only 10 tutors and they constantly complained of being overwhelmed.
The GNA had told Stabroek News that the large numbers and frequent intake of trainee nurses, along with other medical training maladies, were having an adverse effect on the overall quality of healthcare and how local nurses would be perceived overseas.
However, the health minister believes that as long as the classes are equally divided and programme times doubled the situation will ease. “We need to manage the classes – same classroom two different classes … We need to stagger the classes.
That is, having some in the morning and some in the evening but there has been organization resistance to enlightened change,” he said.
“Years ago the nursing school used to have an intake in March and one later in the year the same could be done now. This is going to ease the overcrowding where the same batches will be sharing all of the resources only in smaller numbers,” he added. “My plan is logical and this could have been done a long time now but it seems I have to do everything… You [would] have a smaller number of students using the aids, the sanitary facilities and numbers lessened on the lectures.”
He said he has personally taken the task of ensuring that “staggering” is implemented, possibly for the next batch of students, and will be micromanaging the process.
Another solution to reduce the teacher/student ratio he said would be to employ senior nurses to assist in teaching evening classes. “Many of the senior nurses of the GPHC have volunteered their services to the nursing school, some as long as three years ago.
However, because all the classes are in the morning they could not give their service. Now with staggering they can go do their thing in the morning and help out the evening classes as they have longed for… Everybody will be happy, overcrowding will be tackled while the seniors can give back as they wanted,” he said.
