MONTEGO BAY, St James — The frequency with which cataract surgeries and other medical procedures can be done at a new ophthalmic operating suite at the Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) in St James is being limited by a shortage of nurses.

This was revealed by head of the hospital’s Ophthalmology Department Dr Charmaine Scarlett on Wednesday, during an event to officially open the new suite. The event was bittersweet. While thrilled that the unit is up and running, Scarlett would love to be in a position to maximise its potential.

“We have nursing issues; there is a national nursing shortage. So unfortunately we can only, on a regular basis, have one operating theatre day per week,” she told reporters following the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

“We are hoping to increase this in 2024 to maybe two or three days per week and then, of course, we can do much more surgeries. We’ve asked the administrative staff to try and source nurses for us — in particular, those who would be able to work in our department on those days,” she explained.

Relief, however, may soon be on the way.

“We’re looking at recruiting from overseas. There is an ongoing programme with Cuba that we are utilising now and we are looking at something with India,” CRH’s CEO Charmaine Williams-Beckford told the Jamaica Observer.

“We did some interviews already and so we are in the process,” she added.

She was unable to provide a timeline for when additional nurses would be on board.

For now, the new unit is already making a difference. Since it opened its doors to patients in June there has been a significant increase the number of surgeries done.

“To date we have done about 130 cataracts and about 32 minor procedures,” Dr Scarlett said.

Part of that, she said, is due to work being done by mission teams that have visited the facility from overseas.

“So far we’ve had three missions for the year,” she remarked.

They expect more.

“We have many doctors who would love to come for missions to assist us and the fact that we now have our unit, separate and apart from our operating theatres and we’re not fighting with the cancer and the trauma, we can accept them and they can come and work as long as they wish,” she stated.

“Most of them, they come for four to five days and we do as many surgeries as possible. We have two more missions lined up in February 2024 and I’ve been approached by many other missions who are willing to assist us,” Dr Scarlett added.

The new facility was made possible through the benevolence of the Eye Health Institute, based in Colorado, United States, in collaboration with a number of stakeholders, in particular with the University of Michigan.

Made up of two retrofitted 20-foot containers the ophthalmic unit has two operating suites, the smaller of which doubles as a recovery room. It also includes a storage room, pre-operation area and sluice room.

It offers a bit more than a similar facility that was set up in Sandy Bay, Hanover, some years ago.

“We looked at bringing down two more containers to do another project similar to Sandy Bay but the pandemic kind of threw our plans into turmoil. So we were kinda figuring out what we could do and we were so fortunate that the University of Michigan, the architecture department, was able to help us to repurpose the containers for the surgery clinic that you have here today,” said founder and president of the Eye Health Institute Dr Richard Cross.