Minister of Health and Wellness, the Hon. Dr. Michael Darville recently addressed the shortage of nurses in the country while visiting the island of Grand Bahama.

Dr. Darville assured the public that the government has a plan to address the issue.  He said, “the short term plan is particularly with specialty nurses to bring them in from abroad to fill the gap but it means now that training is paramount.”

The Minister outlined some of his plans for nursing.  “We just completed a cohort of 41 nurses by way of the PHA Academy and theses are psychiatric nurses that will be deployed in the Family Islands, Grand Bahama and New Providence so that we can do a better job in managing mental health throughout the country.  Next we have a group of midwives that are being trained at the University of The Bahamas and this year we intend to bring on a second batch of midwives.”

According to Darville the government intends to introduce an emergency medicine specialty for nurses.  He added, “we want to go into some renal nurses as well and then of course scrub nurses in our theatres.  So we are actually activating our training program and that’s one of the reasons why I’m here in Grand Bahama today.”

While on Grand Bahama Minister Darville also visited the construction site of the new medical facility on the island.