For 2023, Saint Lucia has prioritised recruiting and retaining nurses to ensure enough skilled and qualified persons amid the nursing brain drain.
In an International Nurses Day message, Chief Nursing Officer Kerthney Charlemagne-Surage explained that nursing faces many challenges.
“The greatest and most concerning is nursing shortage as we witness the migration of nurses to more lucrative employment,” she explained.
“Whilst we cannot prevent nurses from pursuing their professional development goals, it is critical that we ensure a comfortable number of skilled and qualified persons at the bedside and within the communities,” the Chief Nursing Officer said.
In this regard, she stated that the Ministry of Health had placed nurse recruitment and retention as a 2023 priority, with incremental investments in key strategic areas to ensure a brighter future for nurses and their profession.
“We anticipate continued investments in the nursing profession in the areas of jobs, education and practice,” the Chief Nursing Officer said.
Nurses worldwide celebrated International Nurses Day on Friday under the theme: Our Nurses, Our Future.
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Better train them on the cheap. So many bright young st Lucians that have subjects but no.prospects. And send them all over. Some will go. Some will stay. Either way they will contribute economically.
I was waiting to read in the article how exactly you all are planning to retain nurses but as expected it is not there. The system has to change for the migration of nurses to be reduced. The reality is it costs a nurse about $30,000 EC to go to Sir Arthur to pursue a degree in nursing which is 4 years. When they complete that nursing course, do you think it is realistic for them to go and work at St Judes/OKEU for $2000/$3000 a month when they have to pay back that huge debt from such a salary when they can go and work in the UK, US, Australia etc where they can work for a salary 4 or 5 times more than that. Wake up! This is 2023!
The problem is st lucia cannot trust you people with loans cause you all will get the training escape to australia, new zealand, canada and the USA and not pay back the loan. Our lucians have bad habits. I have taken student loans and although I think the terms were not favourable and I felt like I was cheated and paid so much more than I took, at least I was not one of those people who took money from the country and never paid back. it is not fair that you borrow to further yourself and when you get there you don’t pay it back. That’s why sometimes the governement can’t support you all because you people can’t be trusted to hold your end of the bargain. So if government make loans available with less collateral, you people will just take the money, maybe don’t do the nursing work, enjoy yourselves, make a few babies and have no degree or escape if u get the degree!