Dear Editor,
A letter captioned ‘Bitter complaints of the nurse anaesthetists’ in Kaieteur News of March 10 really attracted my attention. What form of anaesthesia is being administered by nurses in Guyana, and what form did the training for this medical speciality take?
Granted nurse anaesthesiology is nothing new, for in the United States, Certified Registered Nurse Anaesthetists (CRNA), have been providing anaesthesia care for over a century and a half. However, nurse anaesthesiology is a graduate-prepared profession, and in addition to the nurse being a Registered Nurse, she/he must also complete a master’s degree in anaesthesia. Furthermore, candidates are required to have completed a minimum of one year of full-time nursing in a medical or surgical ICU. The nurse must also be board certified in anaesthesia.
Are our nurses being held to the same or almost the same level? Or are patients’ lives being placed at risk? Is there an absence of trained anaesthetists in Guyana ‒ I mean the guys at the fully trained end of the spectrum, ie, doctors who have graduated from medical school, are fully registered medical practitioners, have completed residency training and have applied and completed postgraduate training in the speciality called anaesthesia?
Is there not a General Medical Council, that at best oversees quality assurance for anaesthesia, especially since the nurse anaesthetist forms part of the anaesthetic team? She is certainly a step up from a nurse having undergone a different discipline of training.
Again, to whom is the Registered Nurse Anaesthetist accountable, once she has administered anaesthesia, and to this inquiry I add, what type of anaesthesia is she legally permitted to administer? Forget about the five-year contract given to these nurses, but what further training, if any, have these RNAs undergone?
While I am in some degree of sympathy with the nurses in requesting their rights and deserts, I nevertheless strongly feel that an issue of such major concern is being glossed over both by the government and the Minister of Health. I am calling on the Minister of Health, Dr George Norton to investigate at the earliest opportunity.
Yours faithfully,
Yvonne Sam
