While admitting that Guyana continues to lose nurses due to its inability to provide lucrative compensation packages, among other factors, Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony told the Parliamentary Commit-tee of Supply yesterday that government cannot arbitrarily increase salaries without the relevant studies.
He was at the time responding to questions from former Public Service Minister Tabitha Sarabo-Halley during the consideration of the 2022 estimates when he was asked about providing better compensation to nurses.
“As you would know, having served as the Minister of Public Service that to increase salaries that would require a lot more detail and studies to see how that can be done,” the Minister said in response.
He told the Committee that with the exception of Linden, nurse shortages plague every other area of the country, adding that the government is hoping to expand the nursing programme to be able to train more nurses. He further stated that they are also looking at having the nurses trained in specialized areas so as to address the issue of upward mobility.
“For a nurse to actually get upward mobility they have to complete midwifery training and sometimes if you’re not in that field why is it necessary that they must complete that to get upward mobility. Some of these pathways we are working on changing them and we are hoping to do some of that by the end of the year,” he said.
The Health Minister said that the active recruitment from Guyana is an issue and the system has been rapidly losing those nurses. He added that the government is looking at ways of slowing that down while acknowledging that the issue is one that cannot be eliminated.
“There are many things that can be put in place. First of all, if we look at the numbers of nurses we are able to graduate, that number is relatively small. So in terms of training more people to fill the gaps that is something we are going to be addressing.
“Then of course we have to address retention, That is a much bigger problem and that is to compete with the salaries that are being paid in the UK that is a very tall order and what is happening right now is when a nurse is offered a job, let’s say in the UK, that offer is not only for the nurse to go to the UK but for the entire family to accompany the nurse. So these are the dynamics we have and we have to work to see how we can slow it down or address it but it is a big challenge. That pull factor is a big challenge so we are working on it. I won’t say we have perfect solutions but we have to work on addressing some of these things,” he told the Committee.
Anthony said that a study conducted with the nurses, many years ago, revealed that some of the non-monetary incentives that would drive retention include the establishment of a daycare system. He said that they are working on putting that in place during this year.
To further boost the retention of the nurses, the minister said that other non-monetary incentives would be worked out.
Anthony said that the government is exploring increasing its intake of nursing students but before that could happen it would be updating its curriculum.
“We are going to start this year to review the curriculum of nursing. We have a specialized team that is coming in to work with us on reviewing the curriculum. Reordering, reorganizing the nursing curriculum for us and there are lots of other things that can happen and hopefully once we complete that we would be able to train many more persons so we can at least try to fill some of the gaps that are being created with persons migrating. But it is a constant struggle. This didn’t start yesterday, this has been around for quite some time and we have been grappling with this problem,” he said.
