By Dana Malcolm
Staff Writer
#TurksandCaicos, July 15, 2022 – After two years the Cuban Brigade is nearly ready to exit the island and will be leaving in a few days’ time; July 19 was revealed as the final day for the medical team from nearby Cuba which bolstered local medical staff during the earlier days of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Medical staff members are a hot commodity right now and small island states are struggling to keep nurses and doctors at home in the face of larger, richer countries dangling extremely lucrative salaries and career options in attempts to lure the professional out of the region.
It is working and the Turks and Caicos is no different.
“As soon as we recruit a new nurse we have a nurse that is leaving us,” said Dr Denise Braithwaite-Tennant, CEO of InterHealth Canada.
Minister of Health Jamell Robinson explained that while they had been recruiting it was a difficult process and they were hopeful that they would be able to fill their positions.
“Hopefully we do get the responses we need because there is a significant competition across the world for these types of professionals. Hopefully we’ve pitched the jobs and remuneration packages at a level that we will attract the persons we need to be able to fill these roles.”
He explained that people rescinding offers at the last minute was a problem for the Turks and Caicos as well.
“The deal is not done until the person is on the ground because we’ve made offers to people and then weeks before they are supposed to get on the ground they rescind.”
Dr. Braithwaite-Tennant explained why it was so difficult not only to get nurses specifically on-island but to keep them in the Turks and Caicos.
“Mainly they are leaving to be travel nurses in the United States which is commanding access to green cards and higher remuneration. Travel Nurses can earn between $4,000 to $5,000 a week so we are competing with that.”
Braithwaite-Tennant, who is native to Turks and Caicos thanked the soon to depart Cuban Medical Brigade for its service to the TCI during the pandemic. To replace them the TCI Hospitals is seeking 10 more full time specialty nurses.
“What this pandemic has shown us is that the capacity to access specialist nurses in the [local] community is not there.”
Dr. Braitwaite-Tennant said this could be dangerous in times of emergency, as the TCI uses overseas personnel to step in when their doctors go on leave.
“What happened during the pandemic is everyone held on to their specialists so we had doctors going months and months and months without being able to get leave. That’s not sustainable.”
She said to fix it they wanted to introduce medical interns to offset the workload and were recruiting aggressively to fill advanced posts as well.
In mental health at least things are looking up, Robinson explained most of the required staff for the Grand Turk Mental Health clinic had been sourced.
“A number of the personnel, I think about 80 percent of the people we wanted to hire, we’ve identified and they are in-country.”
Additionally the minister said they had good prospects for the Port Health Authority and recruitment was now closed. Describing it as a priority for the Health Ministry Robinson said.
“The next time we have a pandemic event we will have the personnel in place beforehand as opposed to trying to catch up to it after.”
The CEO of the hospitals thanked the community for its patience and reminded that some of the long wait times were a direct result of the staff shortages.