AS the country’s health sector continues to expand, the Ministry of Health is set to officially launch its hybrid programme for the training of nurses.

In an advisory, the Ministry announced that its Health Sciences Education Division in collaboration with the Pan American Health Organisation/World Health Organisation (PAHO/WHO) will launch the professional nursing training programme today.

This comes as the government has recognised an urgent need to train more persons in the field due to its rapid expansion.

In early May, the Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony, said that with three nursing schools currently operating in the country for the registered nursing programme, some 250 persons can be trained every three years.

As such upon having a human resource assessment done, it was indicated that quite a lot more persons will be needed in the field.

The hybrid training programme is being launched in partnership with the global online learning platform, Coursera and will see the theoretical content for the nursing programme being made available online.

Just last month at an International Nurses Day programme, the Minister had said that more than 1,000 persons have already enrolled in the programme even as they noted that they hope to add another 1,000 persons to the programme the following year.

During the presentation of the 2023 National Budget, Dr Anthony revealed that funding will aid in the migration of the programme from regular classroom space to an online space.
He added that some $620 million has also been set aside for the provision of nursing schools which would cater for the building of a nursing school at Anna Regina and the retrofitting of existing facilities like the New Amsterdam nursing school.

While the programme is going to be moved to an online platform there will be a need for simulation centres to provide persons in the programme with the practical experience that would be needed as part of the learning.