MINISTER OF Health John Junor will be pursuing new training opportunities for health professionals, particularly nurses, in an effort to tackle the widepsread shortage plaguing the system.
Training of additional nurses and increasing scholarships for health professionals are some of the plans he is seeking to implement during this calendar year to deal with the situation. The plans were part of his 2004/05 budget presentation.
However, the plans appear to be some way off as Valda Lawrence-Campbell, president of the Nurses' Association of Jamaica (NAJ), said the association has not been consulted as yet.
"We are supposed to have a meeting, but I don't know when," she said.
TRAINED NURSES
The Minister intends to conduct a review of the Kingston School of Nursing and Cornwall School of Nursing to allow for greater intake of applicants to train more nurses.
There are also plans to forge stronger links to strengthen the capacity of other local training institutions to increase the output of trained nurses.
The NAJ president noted that in relation to the review both she and the Minister would have to discuss the systems in place to handle the increase in student population.
MINISTER OPTIMISTIC
"We would have to look at things such as 'do we have enough teachers'?" she said.
As part of these plans, clinical sites will be established in public health facilities to provide health facilities to accommodate practical and clinical training.
In the meantime, the Minister is reporting a decline in the number of general health workers who left the system last year. Pointing to statistics, he said the nursing population has remained constant.
There has been a five per cent decline in the number of nurses leaving, which moved from 22 per cent to 17 per cent last year. He was also optimistic that there would be a further decrease in the figures this year.
The Minister has also expressed his intention to increase the number of scholarships being offered for training, especially in the primary health care.
This includes in nursing, pharmacy, environmental health and other areas such as diagnostic radiography where there is a severe shortage.
