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GPHC gears to improve critical nursing care
Coordinator of In-Service Education Owen John is flanked by the Operation Renewed Hope officials
Critical nursing care at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) is poised for immense improvement.
According to Coordinator of In-Service Education for Nurses, Mr Owen John, training in this area is expected to officially commence in August, a venture which will be supported by Operation Renewed Hope, a charitable organization of North Carolina, United States. It is however expected that a total of 15 nurses, mainly from the GPHC, will be selected for a preparatory programme by June.
Operation Renewed Hope conducts Medical Missions/Outreaches in various countries ranging from India to Cambodia.
The organization has a training branch which is dubbed ‘Infuse’, and two expert nursing officials, Christy Holshouser and Laura Brodwater, had visited the public hospital during the past week with a view of finalising plans for the proposed critical care nursing programme.
They held discussions with several key personnel at the GPHC, including the Chief Executive Officer, Mr Michael Khan; the Director of Medical and Professional Services, Dr Madan Rambaran and the Director of Nursing Services, Ms. Audrey Corry.
A previous visit to Guyana in the year 2006 saw Operation Renewed Hope officials conducting several medical clinics under the auspices of the Ministry of Health.
However the main purpose of the recent visit was to help supplement the capacity of the GPHC nurses, with the primary tasks being to refine the proposal for the programme, which is currently near completion.
They were also tasked with making the necessary preparations for the delivery of the programme, which will include scheduling simulation exercises and setting the stage for distance education learning; training of trainers who will become the facilitators of the programme after they would have completed the initial training, and making recommendations for overseas critical care nurses to work with GPHC staff.
The programme which is expected to be a one-year comprehensive certificate programme is designed to provide nurses with an in-depth, hands-on understanding of critical care and will be owned by the GPHC.
According to John, talks have already been had with the General Nursing Council to ensure that the programme is recognised. John noted that in the past it was mainly doctors who were exposed to critical patient care, a trend the hospital plans to modify if there is to be a balance in the delivery of care.
“What has happened is that we have doctors who have some specialty training in critical nursing care but our nurses are not trained in this area. Without this training the doctors could give an order and the nurses may not know what to do, so it is very important to have this balance.”
The programme, John emphasised, comes at a time when the operation of the hospital is expanding considerably.
He said that it was in recognition of the fact that the hospital is offering its service to a growing population, that efforts were made to train doctors in post graduate surgery.
He however added that nurses will also have to be similarly trained.
Critical care nursing, John stressed, is geared at empowering nurses to make some decisions in terms of assessment of patients and being able to deliver care to an extent that patients can recover from critical conditions.
“We have to train our nurses at a very high level to care for patients by effectively assessing patients’ needs and make appropriate interventions…They have to be able to sustain the patients even when the doctors are not there.”
Critical care nursing will be offered as a separate unit where nurses are able to give intense care, John said, adding that “without the relevant training it will be near impossible for them to deliver, because you need to have patients constantly monitored and assessed.”
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