–as police investigations continue

NURSING students, some 150 of them from all across Guyana, will be re-sitting the 2016 Professional Nurses State Final Examination on February 21, 2017, following a leak of the initial exam paper last October.This is according to newly appointed Minister of Public Health, Volda Lawrence, on Monday at her maiden press conference at the Ministry of Public Health on Brickdam.
Conducted on October 19 and 20, 2016, the exam was rendered null and void after it was discovered that there was an alleged breach in the Clinical and Functional aspects of it. The breach was announced by then Public Health Minister, Dr George Norton, who had said that the students who wrote the examination at the time would not be held culpable.
The examination is administered to nursing students from the Georgetown School of Nursing, the Charles Roza School of Nursing, the New Amsterdam School of Nursing, and the St Joseph Mercy Hospital.
And according to Minister Lawrence, students have been in “limbo” for several months now due to this allegation of the exam paper being leaked.
The minister noted that upon assuming office, she was approached by several students who expressed concern about the matter.
“I was visited by several students who laid their concerns, and I was privy to some documents which were sent to Dr George Norton,” Minister Lawrence said, adding that she listened to the students and subsequently met with the Nursing Council.
SEEK ASSISTANCE
During the latter meeting, the minister said that she examined the process for the preparation of exams, and it was agreed that one of the ways of resolving the issue was to seek assistance from the Ministry of Education.
This has resulted in the Ministry of Education now being tasked with acting on behalf of the Public Health Ministry, to: engage its personnel to prepare new multiple-choice questions; to administer those questions on February 21; and to have a group of persons recruited to mark the essay-type questions.
The results of the exam, according to the minister, are expected to be presented to the Public Health Ministry on February 28, while the declaration of those results will be relayed to the students no later than March 2.
In preparation for the exam, Minister Lawrence said that the Nursing Council has agreed to provide tutoring to students involved, since not all of them who wrote the exam did both the multiple-choice and essay-type sections.
She said that only students who wrote the multiple choice will benefit from the tutoring, and that it will be all students from all nursing schools across the country.
The minister was keen to note that these measures which seek to remedy and rectify the situation were all agreed upon by the Nursing Council.

NO COMMENT
In relation to the ongoing investigation regarding the alleged breach, however, Minister Lawrence was reluctant to make a pronouncement, noting that the police are still conducting their investigations.
“I do not want to say much about that matter, but police investigations are continuing,” she said.
Having said that, she did let on that an official who is believed to be involved in the matter is “not someone engaged by the Nursing Council, nor the Ministry of Public Health.”
Last December, then Public Health Minister George Norton had said that internal investigations had yielded information which might not be too flattering to the Guyana Nursing Council.
It was suggested that one of the officials of the Council was the person who allegedly leaked the exam paper, but that person was out of the country at the time, and their absence was stalling the investigation.
But according to Minister Lawrence, that official is neither engaged by the Council nor the minister; that the person in question is someone assumed to be associated with law enforcement, and is still abroad.
Meanwhile, student nurses’ representative, Mr Vibert Forde, said the situation has left his colleagues “in a disturbed emotional state.”
Forde explained that the students have been advised to work on clinical areas, and while it has been stressful and disturbing, the recommendations put forward to resolve the matter “seem fair.”
“This will benefit us the students and nursing professionals,” he said.