Great hope for Ghanaian nurses

Nurses coming from Ghana to work at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) and other public health care facilities are experienced and highly certified in specialty areas.

This assurance came from the Executive Chairman of the QEH Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland who said that the nurses being recruited to start work from January 2020 were equipped with post basic qualifications.

The hospital chief and a team of local health authorities recently returned from Ghana where they interviewed over 100 Ghanaian nurses.

Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland

“We are really pleased with the quality of nurses that we saw in Ghana. They are solid nurses and I think they would be a complement to the nursing team that we have here.

“We are going to get the opportunity to bring nurses in with specialist skills. And what is wonderful, is because it is a government-to-government programme they are coming to work with us, they are going to be having the same salaries and conditions of work as Barbadian nurses.

“I understand that people have said that they are going to be paid different and better, that is not the case, that would be an industrial relations nightmare. There is a scale for nursing and it would be based on your years of experience and qualification,” she said.

Speaking to members of the media following the hospital’s 55th Anniversary Service, held at QEH’s Chapel, this morning, Bynoe-Sutherland also indicated that Ghanaian nurses would receive a gratuity instead of a pension.

“But as you have heard from the nursing fraternity, we need hundreds of nurses, so we don’t have enough of a throughput of local nurses. We are going to have to continue to supplement until we are able to get our basic and post basic programming up to provide the numbers that we require,” Bynoe-Sutherland added.

Last Friday, Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr Jerome Walcott signed an agreement for the recruitment of 120 nurses from Ghana.

The agreement was signed when Prime Minister Mia Mottley paid a courtesy call on President Nana Akufo-Addo in Ghana. anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb