9 February 2023
FIFTY nurses have signed up for overseas jobs and have left the country.
Secretary of the Prime Minister Dr Jimmie Rodgers confirmed this in a press conference yesterday.
“50 or so nurses are leaving the country for overseas jobs,” Rogers said.
He also reiterates that the health ministry is not blocking any nurse wishing to look for green pastures overseas.
Rather, the MHMS is mindful of the effect that this pending mass brain drain in the health care sector will have, thus is monitoring the situation, he adds.
“The Ministry of Health and Medical Services [MHMS] does not look to stopping nurses that would like to seek [jobs overseas] but they respect their human rights whilst at the same time they are conscious they don’t want to lose everyone but to retain some to provide health care services and so they are looking at that balance.”
Rodgers said so far, the issue of nurses leaving the country for jobs overseas is not a ‘big problem’ for MHMS.
He said the health ministry also highlighted that there are 306 nurse interns that are yet to be fully registered and 200 nurses coming online.
“Thus, we have about 500 nurses that are coming online,” Rodgers said.
He stressed the other part they are looking at is all the retired nurses because these particular batch of nurses will fit in very well with age care.
“They can be refreshed before leaving the country, if not they can be refreshed to come in and fill gaps if there is any gap sighted when some of the other nurses go out.
“Basically, at the moment nurses leaving is not being stopped.
“They are not going to stand in the way of any nurse that would like to have better returns but they are watching very carefully to make sure national nursing situation does not suffer whilst that happens,” Dr, Rodgers said.
Source. Island Sun newspaper.
Comment.
Truly sad to have news of this occurrence.
Yours sincerely
Frank Short
