With more than 140 nurses leaving their jobs at the Georgetown Hospital over the past 11 months, the country’s premiere health public health institution has found itself facing a severe shortage of nurses. The fear is the situation could worsen over the next year.
At a press conference today, Chief Executive Officer of the Georgetown Hospital, Robbie Rambarran, said there is a need of 600 nurses at the hospital to meet the global industry standard.
“We have a deficit of about 55% in our direct nursing care; that’s maybe about 600 nurses we need and this is to take industry standard. Industry standard meaning, in the ICU, we need one nurse to one patient, in a stepdown, which is a High Dependency Unit, we need 2:1, and there are other areas that [require] 1:4,1:6. So, based on those industry standards, when we compute that with the amount of beds we have, we are about 600 nurses short,” Rambarran explained.
The public hospital currently has over 450 beds, with some 881 nurses on duty.
Like other hospitals across the country, the Georgetown Hospital has been losing its nursing staff to the United Kingdom, Canada and a number of Caribbean countries.
Director of Nursing Services, Sister Leslyn Holder, in her report, disclosed that for 2023, a total of 146 nurses resigned from the Georgetown hospital.
“For staffing, starting January 2023, we commenced the year with a total of 896 nursing staff of which 116 are staff on loan from the Ministry of Health. Staffing at the end of November, and there is no change to current date, we have a total of 881 staff of which 148 are staff on loan from the Ministry of Health. Throughout the year, we had 86 new hires, and two rehires. We had 146 resignations,” Holder detailed.
In 2022, a total of 107 nurses left their jobs at the hospital.
With the number of resignations out numbering the number of hires per annum, GPHC has resorted to the use of foreign nurses. Currently, there are 33 Cuban nurses in the system, and according to the hospital’s administration, a request has been made to the Health Ministry for additional Cuban nurses to work alongside locals.
Holder said the shortfall in nurses is being felt throughout the hospital, and remains a significant challenge, as key aspects of healthcare delivery at risk of being affected.
She said nonetheless, the hospital has been improving healthcare delivery, through robust and continuous education and training by the In-service Education Unit in partnership with the hospital’s regional and international partners.
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