TRAINING NURSES

Persons trained as nurses at Government’s (read taxpayers) expense should be required to sign agreements to work for the Ministry of Health for a stipulated period following on graduation, say for three years. The same principle should apply to already trained nurses who may be awarded scholarships to obtain University degrees in nursing. The cost of training, whether that of the student nurse or the trained nurse seeking additional qualifications, should be treated as a loan which is considered fully discharged on completion by the nurse of the contracted period of service.

Should the beneficiaries, however, opt not to complete the period of service or take up employment in the country’s Health Service, the loans should become fully recoverable. Trinidad and Tobago taxpayers, with the Government acting as the facilitator, will be required over the next several years to pay millions of dollars to train individuals as nurses to fill an estimated 850 vacancies in the public sector. Many of these nurses, particularly those acquiring nursing degrees at Government’s expense can be expected to head for the US, Canada and the United Kingdom to take up employment in those countries, where salaries are somewhat higher. But while training in Trinidad and Tobago has been free to the student nurses etc, it should be noted that in the US and Canada persons studying nursing are required, generally, to pay for the full cost of their tuition.

In Canada, for example, persons wishing to study nursing can apply for special student loans which are repayable following a grace period after graduating. All expenses, tuition, food, accommodation, transport, books and the repayment of student loans are borne by the students and/or their families. In Trinidad and Tobago, however, not only does Government bear the majority of costs but actually provides student nurses with stipends which were recently increased to $1,200 a month in the first year of training, rising to $1,700 a month in the third and final year. When our nurses, trained at taxpayers’ expense, migrate to the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom to access the relatively higher remuneration in those countries there is the inferred irony of Trinidad and Tobago, a Third World country, subsidising, technically speaking, health care in these developed nations.

In turn, these nurses will be expected to continuously upgrade their efficiency by pursuing regular training courses and/or attending relevant conferences, not at the hospitals’ expense or that of the respective States’ but at their own cost. It should be understood clearly that the arguments being advanced are not designed to prevent individuals seeking better salaries and a higher standard of living in the First World countries. Rather, should they wish to do so they should be required to first repay costs incurred by Government for their training. This would allow scores of other Trinidadians and Tobagonians, at no unnecessary additional costs to taxpayers, to avail themselves of opportunities at upward mobility, while at the same time provide needed quality health care at local health institutions.