TWENTY- SEVEN senior nursing managers and supervisors from the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) have successfully completed 40 credit hours of the University of the West Indies School of Nursing Disaster Related Psychological and Mental Health Trauma Training.

This psychological support and preparedness capacity-building programme will greatly help nurses to assess, plan, prepare and better work in intensely emotional environments such as disasters and pandemics such as COVID-19, whilst ensuring and enhancing their own emotional well-being.

CEO of Psychosocial Health, Ministry of Public Health, Balogun Osunbiyi told the Guyana Chronicle during a telephone interview that there are 18 countries in the Caribbean who participated in the programme.

These countries include Jamaica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda and Trinidad and Tobago.

Osunbiyi added that the programme is a regional one for all nurses in the Caribbean.
The five-day programme has five modules.

These modules include: key concepts and terms in disaster preparedness and response; needs and intervention in disaster preparedness and developing and assessing nurses’ roles in disaster management.

Osunbiyi opined that this training comes in quite handy to prevent assistance for persons, particularly those nurses who are on the frontline and who are affected by mental health issues as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Nurses have to deal with a lot of stress in coping with an infectious disease like COVID-19, while serving the needs of the general public ,” Osunbiyi added.

According to Osunbiyi, this second batch of nurses trained in Guyana, but the first of GPHC staff, which is the main hospital for COVID-19 in Guyana.