Franklyn: Nurses facing multiple challenges

Head of Unity Workers’ Union Caswell Franklyn is expressing serious concerns over the risky work environment this nation’s nurses are finding themselves in.

Speaking on a recent radio call-in programme, the Opposition Senator charged that in the current Covid-19 environment, nurses within some medical facilities are being tested for the virus, but then being sent right back to work before receiving results.

Revealing he has been asked by several nurses to represent their interests as they have become dissatisfied with their current representation, he outlined a myriad of issues affecting the profession, including hazard allowance, qualifications pay, and the nurses’ regional exam to name a few.

Speaking particularly on the Geriatric Hospital, where a patient and several staff members, including one nurse tested positive for the virus recently, he said some of its nurses had voiced unease with an apparent new proposal.

“They are proposing to nurses at the Geriatric Hospital that they work 12 hours and then they bus them to a hotel, they stay at the hotel and do not have any contact with their families and then they come back another 12 hours later to start another shift for two weeks,” he stated, noting he had advised the nurses not to accept the proposal.

Speaking on the vexing issue of the regional nurses’ exam – which large numbers of student nurses coming out of the Barbados Community College (BCC) fail each year, and in so doing see their dreams of becoming a registered nurse with the ability to work in other CARICOM territories dashed – Franklyn stressed this issue must be fully addressed.

“Up to last year, there really was no syllabus for this exam and a lot of people failed. I suggested that nurses who are trained in Barbados are for Barbados and if you want to work outside of Barbados, then do the region, but you are trained by the Community College to work in Barbados and they have taken those nurses and not allowed them to be registered nurses and then we are bringing in nurses.

“I am sure that if we had allowed the nurses that had been fully trained at the BCC to work in their field, we would not have to be bringing in nurses from anywhere else,” he asserted.