Nursing School undergoes sensitisation workshop

Following the hosting of two previous Peace Corps/PEPFAR stigma and discrimination (S&D) sensitisation workshops with nursing students, the Peace Corps HIV Taskforce aimed to bring sustainability of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes acquired from these trainings by working with the nursing school leadership.
Peace Corps and President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is looking to work with the nursing programme to integrate the learning and objectives from these trainings into the nursing curriculum, helping to ensure nurses in Guyana enter the work force equipped to provide the highest standard of care to all persons.
To this end, from June 8 to June 10, principals, department heads, tutors, and senior students from the Georgetown, Linden, New Amsterdam, and St Joseph Mercy Nursing Schools attended a three-day interactive workshop, where they participated in activities that brought to light how both conscious and unconscious discrimination can affect patients’ access to care and health outcomes.
Evidence shows that negative health service experiences directly result in negative health outcomes. Unfortunately, it is the already marginalised populations that are primarily subject to S&D in service settings. The workshop focused on strategies for health system and curriculum strengthening, by providing health care professionals a better understanding of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons, whom are among the gender and sexual minority (GSM) patients they serve.
The training also enlightened participants to issues that people living with HIV (PLHIV) face in health service settings, providing deeper understanding of the full impact in treating PLHIV & GSM patients with care.
Perhaps the most impactful part of the workshop was the panel discussion, in which participants were able to gain insight from panelists who identify as members of the key populations. This discussion not only provided greater context to the topics covered, but also served to humanise the issue, providing faces to LGBT Guyanese and persons living with HIV.
At the conclusion of the training, participants expressed a sincere desire to eliminate stigma and discrimination of GSM and PLHIV persons in the nursing system.  Action plans were developed which including everything from student lead stigma and discrimination sessions to incorporation of greater GSM & PLHIV education in the general curriculum.
Peace Corps and PEPFAR applaud this commitment, and will provide support in the completion of this initiative.  Peace Corps Director of Programme and Training, Melanie Ingles, indicated Peace Corps commitment to collaboration with nursing school leadership to integrate the training into general curriculum, while PEPFAR Country Coordinator, Stephanie Joseph de Goes, encouraged the participants to lead the way forward in eliminating stigma and discrimination to provide the highest standard of care in Guyana, where all patients especially sexual minorities are respected and treated with dignity and care for the most positive health outcomes.