Nurses urged to seize CSME opportunities

She said nurses should see ways to turn their many talents into services that would give them the quality of life they wanted to achieve in the Caribbean.

Speaking "as a nurse" on the CSME: Its Implications for Nursing and Health Care" at the TT Registered Nurses Association’s (TTRNA) 75th Anniversary luncheon at the Ballroom of Crowne Plaza, Burnett said nurses had many qualities to bring to the CSME table. They provided a service essential to society, had experience in personnel management, team building, total quality management, strategic planning, disaster preparedness and infection control. She said nurses were the masters of resourcefulness and were unfazed by hard work.

Marshall Burnett said nurses must come to terms with their experience and understand that for this century they have to do things differently.

"We need to explore all the possibilities inherent in CSME."

She added that "the same old same old" approach was not working. She questioned if nurses were going to resign themselves to the government payroll for this century as they did in centuries before.

"For this century we must become our own employers right across the Caribbean, contracting our services to the institutions and agencies that need us, taking charge of the career ladders and making space for multiple roles and functions which should be properly remunerated."

She said nurses have been leaving the Caribbean for four centuries and it has made no difference whether the Gross Domestic Product and the foreign exchange were good. However, she forecasts that job opportunities in North America would dry up by 2020 and there would be fewer opportunities for migration.

"We will have to take care of our own employment and care giving needs."

Burnett also highlighted some of the opportunities available including working as health educators in the tourism sector, occupational nursing in the private sector and community nursing.

She said the basic curriculum for student nurses should have an elective in economics and nurses with the right attitude should be encouraged to do economics, accounting, law or information technology.

"We will need them in the future we are creating. It will save us having to employ expensive consultants and have to educate them on the whys and wherefores."

Burnett said nurses should learn a foreign language, preferably Spanish. She said the CSME has an entire section dealing with doing business with Latin neighbours.

Health Minister John Rahael and scores of nurses attended the luncheon.