The Ministry of Health and Wellness is re-engaging retired nurses in an efforted to address the shortage of nurses in the public healthcare system.
While visiting Grand Bahama recently health minister, the Hon. Dr. Michael Darville told ZNS News more than forty retired nurses will rejoin the service. He said, “we have another batch of nurses there we’re about to recruit from abroad. But this is what’s really interesting, we took a paper to Cabinet to hire retired nurses and I got approval to hire some 47 retired nurses throughout the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, some on the family islands, to bring them back into the system to function and to continue to contribute.”
The minister also spoke to the training opportunities being used to increase the skills of healthcare working. “We’re training fifty trained clinical nurses here in Grand Bahama at Terreve. We’re also doing it will Baptist Community College. And we’re looking to work into other MOUs with other colleges to ensure that our workforce in maintained.”
Dr. Darville also informed that forty persons including pharmacy technicians, clinical nurses and EMT Specialist have recently graduated from the PHA Academy. He said that building a sustainable healthcare workforce depended on training and supplementing staff through international partnerships.
