Final year students of the Georgetown School of Nursing resumed their duties at the Georgetown Public Hospital on Tuesday, while promising to give the Ministry of Public Health one more week to come to a decision concerning the re-sitting of their professional nursing final exams.
It is the last exam the batch of 250 students were required to sit to gain their licences to practice.
“We are only going for seven days more, no longer,” nursing student Vibert Forde stated during a sit-in held on Tuesday, where as many as 30 nurses gathered at the D’Urban Park after meeting with the Minister within the Ministry of Public Health, Dr Karen Cummings. It was related that Dr Cummings had requested that they return to the wards for seven days, at the end of which a decision would be made.
“They’re telling us that there’s an investigation still ongoing. Now if the investigation is still ongoing, why would you tell us that you’re awaiting the report, which was on Friday, now we’re told to wait another 7 days. So I’m not certain about why they have us on this whole limbo but I would really like this investigation to come to a conclusion very quickly,” student representative Jeanel Lewis told the media.
Lewis explained that most students did not return to the wards since November 11, when the issue arose, while alleging also that a few nurses were being victimised in attempts to have them sway the others to return to duty.
“They advised us to go and work and give them seven days so we plan from tomorrow (Wednesday) we will return to the wards and work up to Tuesday (tomorrow). And we shall return to them for an update on Tuesday or wait for the media briefing which the Minister said she would give,” Lewis added.
On November 11, 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.”
Speaking with Stabroek News, Lewis had then said that Principal tutor Cleopatra Barkoye had informed 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.
Where is the evidence?
Among the concerns raised by the students on Tuesday is the fact that within the three months since allegations were made about the students’ final examination papers being compromised, the Council is yet to present any evidence to back their claims.
“If you have concrete evidence to come up with a decision to say re-sit this exam, why are you taking so long three months to make a decision? You know why they have that investigation? Because the students do not want to rewrite the exam.
That is why the police came in this matter,” Markita Witter commented.
Her colleague, Forde, building on her point, questioned why action had not been taken prior if information of the breach was received beforehand as stated. “…If they had this solid evidence that they’re claiming they have, why not bring it before the exam and give us a later date? Why have us go through this trouble… go into an exam, sit in there for hours, write it and then two weeks later you gon come to me and say, ‘Hey you know that exam wah you write the other day ain valid? Leh we do this thing over again.’ It makes no sense… So how can I accept that?” he asked.
“Come forward with your concrete evidence, from day one, that’s what they should have done. Come forward ‘you need to re-sit, here is why.’ Paper compromised, here is how. We need to be answered in the earliest possible time. We gave the administration the time they need to complete the investigation. Come up with a decision and we want it now,” he added.
The students were not told how they scored in the assessment but in possible defence of the grades, Forde opined that papers can be compromised in a number of ways, including by having lecturers focus on particular study areas, as was done.
“They don’t have to tell you that this is what is gonna be in the upcoming exam but they can simply say, ‘okay, let’s focus on this particular area.’ We’ve been focusing on areas for the longest while. Particular areas and looking at patterns in which these papers have been given to us, or from previous students who have written the exam,” he noted.
Lewis added, “…We get put into blocks for two weeks, our mock exams were very similar to our examination that we wrote, ’cause that was the initial claim that there were 100% passes countrywide. You cannot give us the closest thing only thing changed from the mock exam to the real exam is the age and a name and expect us to go into an exam and fail it. Now only a stupid person would go into a block and not take hints or pay close attention to what is being emphasised on.”
Stigma
“At the meeting, our director of Health Sciences said this issue is a dark cloud that if the exam is not re-sit, we will have to deal with this dark cloud for the rest of our career. However, the dark cloud has already been cast.
Now, anywhere we go with a certificate from our current nursing school it will be scrutinized, re-sit or not. They can no longer trust the council. They can no longer trust the integrity of our certificate,” Forde opined.
“…Then we cannot go out there and work because of stigma on us. Patients seeing us and say, ‘Oh, you’re a part of the batch that buy they paper.’ You don’t have no evidence,” Witter stated.
It comes as no surprise then that the students, although against re-sitting the exams, have stated that if it comes to that, as a matter of trust, they do not want the exams to be reset by the Nursing Council. It was noted that the students deal with the Council members on a day-to-day basis as their Principal tutors and most of their lecturers are on the General Nursing Council.
“We do not want the council to set the exams and we would wish for the council to be reshuffled. They should get some—like CXC, their exam is set in Jamaica—they should get a nursing board out of this country to set it and import it…and we refuse to write all four papers because one of the papers, which is a clinical, consists of 100 multiple choice and the functional 50 multiple choice, then you still have the paper twos to answer, which are essay type questions and all of them you have to answer,” said Lewis.
Lewis related that when the issue was raised at the meeting on Tuesday, it was suggested by the Director of Health Sciences Wilton Benn that the Regional Nursing Body sets the examination.
