By Ingrid Brown

Observer staff reporter

THE health sector was critically injured yesterday with several hospitals being forced to cancel elective surgeries and see only dire emergency cases, as some government-paid registered nurses stayed off the job to back their wage demands.

By nightfall, the industrial action had spread across the island and in the western region, there were calls on families to take home their non-critical relatives as hospitals reeled from the shortage of nurses.

“Effective immediately, and until normality is restored with the full complement of registered nurses back on the job, hospitals in the region will cease all elective services and attend to only emergency cases,” the Western Regional Health Authority (WRHA) said in an advisory yesterday.

“Non-critical patients on wards will be discharged.

Consequently, family members are being asked to make arrangements to receive them. Also, all out-patient clinics are being scaled down with only dire cases being seen,” the authority said.

Operations at the affected hospitals were significantly scaled down and retired nurses and supervisors were struggling to man the facilities. In some cases, hospitals resorted to enrolled assistant nurses who are not fully qualified to carry out some functions of the registered nurses.

Urgent appeals were being made for volunteers, particular those in the field of nursing, to offer their services for the duration of the industrial unrest. But there were no clear indications last night as to when the nurses would resume work.

Health Minister Horace Dalley invited the Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ) which speaks for the RNs, to meet with him tomorrow, appealing to the nurses in a statement yesterday to return to the negotiating table in the public interest.

“I hope that good sense will prevail so that there will be no loss of life as a result of the protest action,” the minister told the nurses.

But while agreeing to talk with Dalley, the nurses indicated they were more interested in seeing Minister of Finance Omar Davies and vowed they would continue their action until he addressed their concerns.

“We are waiting on the finance minister to tell us when he is going to convene a meeting with us, before we instruct the nurses what to do,” Zetta Bruff, acting general secretary of the NAJ declared.

“The nurses have been advised to continue the tempo until we hear from the finance minister,” Bruff told the Observer. Based on the outcome of that meeting, the membership would be advised accordingly.

However, at Observer press time, the nurses said they still had not heard from Davies.

Going above Davies, Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) chairman, Dr Kenneth Baugh called for the intervention of Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller to head off a crisis in the public health sector.

The prime ministrer was off the island in Brazil on business.

Baugh stressed that the nurses were critical to an essential service that was constantly inundated with life-threatening emergencies and he suggested it was appropriate to consider the special circumstances of scarcity of nurses, the fact that some worked in crime-prone areas at high risk hours as well as bearing the burden to “sustain the service under poor and frustrating conditions”.

An Observer check of several hospitals revealed that the nurses message had struck home.

At the National Chest Hospital in Kingston, chief executive officer, Hazel Waite said the eight nurses who were scheduled for the morning shift did not turn up for work, causing activities to scale down in the casualty department.

She said the wards were being manned by enrolled assistant nurses and ward assistants under the supervision of a few senior nurses.

“If the situation continues, I don’t know what is going to happen because the few head of nurses who have been carrying the hospital since yesterday I don’t know how much longer they can last,” she warned.

At the main Kingston Public Hospital (KPH), the situation was said to be similar as several nurses did not report for the afternoon shift.

The Mandeville Hospital cancelled out patient clinics and elective surgeries, after 22 registered nurses called in sick and Paulette Elliot, CEO of the hospital said they were only dealing with emergency cases.

Elliott said that the wards were being manned by a number of retired nurses and some supervisors.

The regional University Hospital of the West Indies was also badly affected by the action as the critical accident and emergency department had to scale down its activities.

Stephanie Reid, CEO of the hospital said that while the accident and emergency departments were the most affected areas, it was anticipated that other departments would soon be affected, if the protest action continued.

In that case, the teaching hospital would be looking at calling in its retired nurses as well as other nurses elsewhere.

“We however have to bear in mind that if these nurses that we are going to depend on, are sympathetic to the cause we may not be able to get the numbers we would be expecting,” Reid said.

At the Spanish Town Hospital and the Bustamante Hospital for Children where only emergency cases were being seen, the situation was as desperate. Exceptions yesterday were the May Pen and Port Antonio Hospitals which were not affected when the Observer checked.

“All my nurses scheduled for duty have come in and I am very pleased with that” said Nadia Nunes-Howe, CEO of the May Pen Hospital.

All registered nurses and enrolled assistant nurses had shown up for duty at the Port Antonio Hospital .

At the Cornwall Regional Hospital in St James, nurses staged a peaceful demonstration outside the gates of the institution.

The NAJ representative at the hospital, Sister Delcine Woodbine said the approximately 20 nurses were just making their presence felt.

“It was not a demonstration,” said Woodbine, who is also third vice-president of the NAJ. “They weren’t seeking to disrupt the operations here.” She said the nurses went out during their break-time and others who were off duty joined in.

There was relief in Trelawny and Hanover where nurses who staged public protests on Tuesday returned to normal duties yesterday.

In Lucea, nurses at the Noel Holmes Memorial Hospital staged a public protest on Tuesday but also returned to normal duties yesterday.

At the Savannna-la-Mar Hospital, Deputy Matron Patsy Callam said nurses had not engaged in any public protest but were in full support of the NAJ’s efforts to press the government for increased wages.

-With additional reporting by Keril Wright in Montego Bay