Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh is moving to ensure one curriculum is taught at the four nursing schools across T&T.
He made the comment yesterday as he said while different curriculum are taught at each school there is one exam set for all of them.
Speaking at a commemorative service in celebration of International Nurses’ Day at the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Port-of-Spain, Deyalsingh said it made sense for one universal curriculum across the board.
“We are going to put in place a mechanism to rationalise nursing education in T&T,” Deyalsingh said, noting the education of nurses must be advanced in this country.
“What I found is there are four schools in nursing and you all write the same exam. But are you trained in preparing for the same exam in the same way...the answer is no.”
He said the ministry will meet with the Education Ministry this week to “bring some sanity” to the nursing exam “so that when people from the four different schools go to write the exam they are all writing one exam based on one curriculum.”
Deyalsingh, who described nurses as the unsung heroes, said their value could not be measured in a pay cheque.
“Expect no thanks. Your thanks will come from another place and the reward you will get then will be much greater than any reward you will get here, because what you do will live on,” Deyalsingh said.
Immediate past president of the T&T Registered Nurses Association (TTRNA), Gwendolyn Lobbie-Snaggs, commended Deyalsingh’s proposal, saying one curriculum was long overdue.
“These four schools all write the same exam, which is the Regional Nursing Examination, but one school teaches at an associate degree level. The other schools all do the degree, so when you finish you have a degree in nursing,” Lobbie-Snaggs said.
“So the students are being examined on something they are not taught so they are at a disadvantage. It is good that the minister has recognised that we need to have a level playing field in education.”
She said what ought to be recognised was a first degree as the entry qualification into nursing, as this was recently recommended at a Caricom meeting.
“We need to get better results from the schools across the board and that will only come when we have one curriculum,” Lobbie-Snaggs urged.
The four schools that teach nursing are the College of Science, Technology and Applied Arts of Trinidad and Tobago (Costaatt), University of the Southern Caribbean, University of the West Indies School of Nursing and Health Ministry, which offers the diploma.