Nursing students protest Council’s decision to re-sit exam
Student nurses in New Amsterdam, Berbice, who would have sat the Professional Nursing Programme Student’s Examination in October 2016, protested the Guyana Nursing Council’s decision to have them re-sit those exams.
The nurses on Friday took to the street in protest following a meeting to which they were summoned at New Amsterdam Nursing School.
Some of the protesting nursing students
During the meeting, a letter was read from the Council, which informed the student nurses that they will have to re-sit the entire examination. According to the letter, the examination was compromised, and as such, they will all have to retake the examination later this month.
The nurses said they were not told or given evidence to support the Council’s claims that the examinations were compromised.
“We are here because we are highly annoyed and we are unhappy of a decision to punish an entire country for the mistakes of a few. On top of that, the papers for the examination are being printed by the Council; it means that it was leaked from the Council, so we are annoyed because we don’t know why we should be punished for something that occurred in their organisation,” one of the nurses said.
Additionally, they argued that the time for a re-sit is too short since they were not given adequate time to prepare for another examination.
“Over at the school they have construction going on and many persons would have put their books down after the exams,” another nurse related.
Forty-four student nurses in Berbice are up in arms about the decision. The Professional Nursing Programme is a three-year programme. (Andrew Carmichael)
