Not so fast Senator Franklyn

Recent calls for the abandonment of the regional nursing exam by Opposition Senator Caswell Franklyn, have been met with stern rebuke by Barbados Nurses’ Association (BNA).

This morning head of the BNA Joanna Waterman told Barbados TODAY that such a move would only serve to compromise the high standards of the profession as well as the health care of Barbadians.

“I want to stress to the nurses and to the public that such a call is ill-advised, as the licensor examination is designed to ensure safety and protection of the public. It ensures that you produce professional nurses, who are safe to deliver care to the public,” said Waterman.

She noted that the need for a regional professional nurses’ exam was recognised since the 1930s and it was nothing short of cavalier to deviate from these well-founded standards.

“There are problems recently with the preparation of nursing students with the Barbados Community College (BCC) and I will address that, but I want to say that the regulatory body for nursing practice in Barbados, which is the Nursing Council, was established since 1932 and it was determined since then, the need to have an established standard of application and licensing,” Waterman explained.

“It is important to ensure that after the students have had a period of training within the college and have had practical training, they must be at a level to take a professional exam, just like all professional bodies such as law and

medicine, Waterman noted. “If you remove the licensing exam then what you would be doing is watering down the profession. We certainly in the professional nurses’ body would not agree with this in any way.”

The high failure rate of Barbadian nursing students taking the regional nurses’ examination presents a major stumbling block to the country’s ability to address its chronic nursing shortage. Currently the nursing shortage has become so critical that it has hindered the full rollout of several initiatives in the Ministry of Health and has resulted in Prime Minister Mia Mottley taking the decision to recruit 400 nurses from Ghana to fill the present void.

However, the BNA head revealed that steps had been taken by the BCC that should ensure a much higher pass rate in the very near future.

“There are problems with the recent high failure rates of students because the problems have stemmed from administration of the nursing syllabus and preparation of the students for the exam. The BCC has done a full panel review and investigations where they brought in specialists from PAHO to advise on the curriculum, methodology and evaluation process. In addition, specialist nursing professors were brought in from the University of the West Indies and they have now put a number of corrective measures in place. So, we shall await the outcome of this, and we expect to see some improvement,” said Waterman.