Dear Editor,
The group of Guyana’s categories of Health Workers include: Trained Nurse/ Midwife; Nurse; Nurse Assistant and Nurse Aide amongst others, who are supervised by more professional health personnel, both male and female. Does the Medex still exist? There is of course an effective recruitment process that involves rigid interview programmes. It is expected that as the appropriate appointment initially is on relevant periods of probation before confirmation, that is of course following satisfactory medical examination – whether male or female. Obviously the process is informed by the satisfactory completion of the specified job description/s and prerequisite qualifications.
Logically the recruit must be alerted about related conditions of service – leave, salary, allowances (possibly including housing/transport), promotability, disciplinary procedure, performance appraisal – aspects of which could relate to marital status. In the case where recruits will come from varying geographical and cultural backgrounds it seems quite reasonable that the team of recruiters will be inter-cultural taking into consideration varying social, cultural and environmental differences between (and amongst) the foreign employee and the under-prepared employer — given the logic that the former would insist on formal representation to address possible differences – both industrial and social.
The Ministry of Labour may have some sense of involvement therein. But then there is the substantive issue of religion. The obvious pre-requisite must be for the ‘Health Worker’ to be in good health. Presumably he/she maintains informed relationship with his/her government and benefits from diplomatic representation, what then are the implications for a change of citizenship? There would appear some interesting scope for competition with local counterpart employees, moreso in the context of organisational growth. In the mix-up there is just the possible issue of interpersonal communication between health worker and patient, moreso if the latter were Venezuelan.
Sincerely,
E. B. John