Two months after they were informed that there had been a breach in their qualifying examinations, 250 student nurses are still not sure what is the way forward.
Last November, final year nursing students were in tears after they were told that they would have to re-sit their final examinations since the Nursing Council had tangible evidence that the tests had been “compromised.”
Efforts to contact the council for comment proved futile as they directed all enquiries to the Ministry of Public Health. New Minister of Public Health Volda Lawrence has declined to speak to the media on the issue until she is “properly briefed,” while Junior Minister Dr. Karen Cummings has not responded to enquiries.
However, this newspaper has also learned that Minister Lawrence met with student representatives on Monday and told them that she had instructed the investigating officer to complete a report on the matter by Friday so that a decision on the way forward could be made by Monday.
Meanwhile, Stabroek News has been told that the students were instructed by Principal tutor Cleopatra Barkoye to continue to study just in case they are required to rewrite the examinations in March/April. The Council has also not marked the papers for the exam originally written in October though former Public Health Minister Dr George Norton had directed that they be marked.
Speaking with Stabroek News in November, student representative Jeanel Lewis had said that Barkoye presented the contents of a letter received on November 8, 2016 that claimed that due to the discovery of tangible evidence of a “compromise in the papers,” all students would be expected to re-sit the examinations before the end of November.
At that time, the distraught students were refusing to re-write the examinations until they were provided with evidence of the compromise.
Several days later, the National Health Policy Committee of the Ministry of Public Health met with the Chairman of the Nursing Council, the Director of the Division of Health Science Education and the Principal Tutor of the Georgetown Nursing School and they were told that the papers for the Clinical and Functional Examination were sold
Following this meeting, Norton had told reporters that the nurses would not be asked to re-sit these examinations “until a proper investigation is completed” into allegations that the examination papers were being sold.
“This finding has resulted in the Examination Committee of the General Nursing Council deciding to deem the current sitting null and void.
The council has indicated that a new examination will be prepared and administered and the respective schools and students will be notified,” Norton explained.
He further noted that investigations were ongoing to identify person or persons who may have been responsible for the leak of examination papers.
Norton subsequently said that the investigations had led police to a member of the council who allegedly sold the paper to a student. That member and the student have not been identified and students continue to ask questions about their future.
