Nurses may soon benefit from additional training- Dr. Anthony

Locally-registered nurses may soon benefit from postgraduate education programmes that will help them to develop new skills while enhancing the quality of healthcare provided to patients, Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony announced on Monday.

Speaking at the launch of a first of its kind hybrid nursing programme earlier this week, the Health Minister said the nurses who are currently studying or have plans to study can benefit from these programmes that will soon be established.

A postgraduate programme would provide registered nurses with updated or specialised skills, allowing them to provide an improved quality of care to patients.

“At this point in time our training has been a little bit ad hoc therefore just like how we have a postgraduate institute to train doctors, we are going to develop a postgraduate institute to train nurses.

“You can’t have one without the other, that is extremely important,” the Health Minister said.

The government already outlined plans to improve the nursing profession. Among those plans are efforts to train and certify more people in a shorter time.

Currently, the aim is to have 3,000 nurses trained in the next three years. To achieve this, a Professional Hybrid Nursing programme was developed. Dr. Anthony said nursing is leading the charge for innovative learning in Guyana and the region at large.

Through this programme, professionals can learn at times that are convenient for them. The postgraduate programme should be executed in the same manner.

“We have approximately about 18 to 20 training programmes and most of these I think we can start working to bringing them online and giving people access to them so they can stay home and have access to them.

“Nursing is actually a pioneer in this regard because you are going to open up a new way for us to train health personnel in Guyana,” Dr Anthony said.