Student nurse stipend with strings attached, says Bostic

Nursing students will once again get a government stipend while they study but the assistance will come with the condition that they work in Barbados before being allowed to take up job opportunities overseas, Minister of Health Lt Col Jeffrey Bostic announced Friday in the House of Assembly.

He also disclosed 10 nurses in the public health care system are to receive specialist training.

Speaking during the 2021/2022 Estimates hearings, Lt Col Bostic said efforts by authorities to improve the pass rate in the regional exams of nurses who graduated from the Barbados Community College have been bearing fruit. More nurses are available to address the shortage of health care workers, he added.

“But we’re not going to stop there,” the health minister declared. “In the next financial year, we have an allocation to return the stipend that was previously afforded to nursing students for them to be able to complete their studies.”

“On this occasion, however, we will be introducing a bond for service to this country. Not that we don’t want people to be able to go abroad, because that is in keeping with Government’s quest for us to be able to produce global citizens with Barbadian roots; but at the same time, since persons are benefitting from the public purse, we believe that a period of service to this country must be necessary before persons can think of going on.”

Lt Bostic said that with more Barbadian nurses passing the regional exams and taking up employment, in addition to the 95 registered nurses who arrived from Ghana last year, Government could now advance its plan to widen 24-hour service at polyclinics.

The David Thompson Health and Social Services Complex in St John will be next in line to give round-the-clock service, he said.

The minister told lawmakers: “We had some setbacks with that, obviously because of COVID, but early in the next financial year we will be starting the process of implementing the 24-hour service in St John, first of all by having an extended clinic which will run from 8 to 8 daily, and that will be followed, once we’ve been able to analyse all the information, with the complete 24-hour service.”

Lt Col Bostic also reported progress had been made in securing specialist training for nurses.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Chamberlain University, an associate and affiliate of the Adtalem Group and Ross University School of Medicine here, will see a two-and-a-half-year programme taught at BCC, he revealed.

“We have provided funds in the Estimates of Expenditure for the next financial year, to commence with the first cohort of nurses pursuing the nurse practitioner programme,” he confirmed.

The group of 10 nurses will include four from the primary health care service, two from Queen Elizabeth Hospital, two from the St Michael District Hospital, and one each from the Psychiatric Hospital and the St Philip District Hospital. (DP)