KINGSTON, Jamaica — President of the Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ), Patsy Edwards-Henry, says she does not see a near end to recurring recruitment drives by the United Kingdom for local nurses.

Her declaration follows a media report Monday morning that Britain’s National Health Service was set to hire up to 500 midwives from overseas nations, including Jamaica.

Speaking with OBSERVER ONLINE shortly after the report, Edwards-Henry described the country’s nurse brain-drain problem as “a wound that is bleeding” which a “band-aid can’t help”.

“The government of Jamaica needs to take a step back and invest in nurses as postulated by the theme from the International Council of nurses this year,” she said.

Noting that 4,225 transcripts have been requested from the Nursing Council between 2017 and 2021 and 1,780 nurses have left the public sector over the last four years, Edwards-Henry said she does not see the “perennial problem” ending anytime soon.

“Nurses continue to seek to go to greener pastures to facilitate them living comfortable lives, taking care of their children, sending them to schools, to universities, to colleges, buying of homes, driving a vehicle. This is the reason why a number of our nurses are leaving. The compensation here in Jamaica just does not cut it and while the government is looking at a compensation review, we are still nowhere near the finalisation of that and we are not seeing where it will benefit nurses as much as we would have hoped that it would,” she explained.

“So, our nurses continue to go, our more seasoned, our specialised nurses, our mature nurses those are the ones who are going and it continues to pose a challenge within the work environment as the nurses who stay are burned out and overworked,” the NAJ president added.

Furthermore, she said despite best efforts, hospitals continue to function under capacity.

“The hospitals continue to try as much as possible to work optimally but we will never be able to give optimal service until we get our nursing cadre up to a level where it is what I call optimal,” she shared with OBSERVER ONLINE.

She added that at maximum, some hospitals function at 70 per cent of its capacity while others only function at 50 and 60 per cent.

International Nurses Day is being observed on Thursday, May 12.