Dominica's health sector on alert for migration of nurses

By Paul Charles

Saturday, September 27, 2003

ROSEAU, Dominica: Dominica's Health ministry is on high alert for what may become a massive migration of the country's best nurses who are being targeted by medical institutions in the United States and other Caribbean nations.

Health Services Coordinator at the Princess Margaret Hospital, Ms. Marvlyn Birmingham, told CNN, that many nurses have already left to take up jobs at medical facilities in the United States and the Caribbean.

Ms. Birmingham added that the local health sector officials were expecting a faster migration rate but the trend could pick up with as a larger number of nurses awaiting word from their would-be employers. 

''I don't have the statistics right now but I know that we have been losing nurses, probably not in a very big drove as we had anticipated, but it may be coming because we still have persons being interviewed, the process is a long one to get to the interview to the US or which ever hospital has recruited them,'' she disclosed.

Ward Sister at the Accident and Emergency Department at the PMH, Ms. Geraldine Webb, said the employer who is this case is the government of Dominica must begin to offer her colleagues attractive packages.

''Not so long ago we had some nurses who left, the sad thing is they're not leaving for America they're just on the outside, and I think it's of some concern to me as a middle manager and of the persons in the higher office,'' Ms. Webb lamented. 

She also said Dominica's health sector is hurting because many of the more advanced and skilled nurses have been the ones to find employment in other countries. 

''Just outside of Dominica our fully qualified and fully trained nurses leave, persons with extra skills leave because of a package that is offered, the employer now needs to look at what is being offered and find incentives to make them stay,'' she suggested.

Officials at the PMH, the island's main hospital, are remaining tightlipped on the number of nurses who have left in recent months. But it is known that the Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands have secured the services of a few Dominican nurses.

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