With a shortage locally as Guyana’s nurses are actively being recruited to work overseas, the Ministry of Health has implemented several measures to combat this including hiring from Cuba, an increase in training of locals, and salary increases.
Speaking at the ministry’s end-of-year press conference yesterday, Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony stressed that the ministry has embarked on several measures in efforts to keep their staff within the system, labelling the shortage of nurses a global issue.
He said that while they cannot stop people who are coming into Guyana to recruit the country’s nurses, one of the things they are doing to increase staffing is to “train more people.”
He explained, that “with the three public nursing schools that we have, that is Georgetown Hospital, Linden and New Amsterdam, we were only able to train about 200 to 250 nurses per year… We …started a programme last year which is a hybrid programme where we have brought in at least 1100 nurses for training and they have started that training and they have three years to complete that course and while they are doing a lot of the theory online we are bringing them in to do the practicals because we have simulation centres that early next year we are setting up.”
According to Anthony, at least six centres will be set up to ensure the nurses in training can carry out their practicals. He said, next year they are hoping to recruit another 1000 – 1200 people for training and as such applications will be opening soon.
Anthony further stated, that they also reviewed the nursing assistant programme with the new format expected to be launched in January 2024, and they are hopeful that they can attract at least 1000 people to join the programme.
“We would be able to train them within a year and so once we are able to train them and once they have completed the course all of them will be recruited into the ministry so these are two programmes that we have developed to address the issues that we have with nurses”, the Minister said.
Additionally, for the first time, 38 people are being trained in a biomedical technician programme and a first batch of 25 health administrators have been trained.
Furthermore, to start filling the immediate void, some 80 Cuban nurses were recruited this year, and according to the minister, another 200 nurses from Cuba are likely to be in Guyana in early 2024 with the ministry actively working to recruit more nurses from other countries.
A three-month course is being carried out to assist the incoming nurses from Cuba with their integration into the country’s workforce.
As the Government of Guyana continues to expand the Ministry of Health’s infrastructure with the building of new hospitals and health centres across the country, it is expected that over 4,000 nurses will be needed in the coming years.
