The Tribune

By PAVEL BAILEY

Tribune Staff Reporter

pbailey@tribunemedia.net

A WORLDWIDE shortage of nurses is impacting recruitment in The Bahamas, a senior Doctors Hospital executive said yesterday.

Bridgette Sherman, the senior vice president of patient care service and nursing administration at Doctors Hospital, highlighted the problem during the reopening of Doctors Hospital West.

She said it is an issue that is affecting both the public and private sectors.

She said of the nursing shortage: “It’s worldwide. Every country is having that issue and it’s a combination of things.

“It’s retirement. It’s upward mobility, most persons find another line to work on. Case management is something else they move on to as well as insurance. You find a lot of nurses in insurance, that sort of thing, to assist those in billing and coding when they are billing us.”

The Bahamas has faced issues with a reported decline in nurses as more Bahamian nurses seek better career opportunities abroad, such as in the United States and Canada.

Last week, Gina Dean, director of nursing at the Ministry of Health, acknowledged the nursing shortage has proved challenging. She also said her ministry is trying to improve working conditions to entice more local nurses to stay.

When asked how Doctor’s Hospital is tackling the shortage, Ms Sherman said it was company policy to focus on retention and mentoring of potential future nurses. She also said Doctors Hospital tries to entice new nurses from the University of the Bahamas (UB) to remain in The Bahamas, saying it was part of their strategic goals “goals to look at what we are doing for retention as well as to recruit”.

She added: “We have a number of things, I know that salary is at the top of it. Just making certain that we are competitive and best in market. We benchmark against Florida with those things. We look at what are equipment looks like for ease of our nursing team and to lend support. We have now started to bring on train clinical nurses in the system to assist the registered nurse. We have increased our capacity with patient care technicians, also an assistant to the nurse. We also just added this year certified medical technicians or certified medical assistants rather.”

Ms Sherman discussed how Doctors Hospital’s Institute of Leaning acts as a post-secondary institution focused on training certified medical assistants and emergency medical technicians to assist registered nurses.

Additionally, Doctors Hospital has in place a nursing cadet programme aimed at students in grades 10 through 12.

Ms Sherman said it is through these initiatives and the scouting of nurses currently at UB that Doctors Hospital hopes to recruit more nurses locally.

She said: “We have a large number (nurses in training). I think in total we have somewhere around 50. And I say in total because each year you have a certain number that graduates. This past nursing council exam we had 27 who went to UB who took the exam. And we have another 15 who will sit exams again in December of this year.”