The Minister of Health, Honourable Dr Frank Anthony, today delivered remarks at a Continuing Nursing Education (CNE) session hosted by the Nurses and Midwives Council, Guyana, at the Ministry’s Conference room Brickdam.
CNEs are educational activities designed to build on the clinical and educational foundations of nurses and midwives for the improvement of practice, education, administration, and research or theory development to improve the provision of respectable healthcare that reflects the community’s needs.
This CNE session, which was offered both in person and on a virtual platform, commenced yesterday and will conclude today. Some discussions focused primarily on Contraceptives and Patient Safety. Participants of these sessions will be awarded 4 credit hours, which will be added to their contact hours of training needed each year to re-register.
Minister Anthony stated in his remarks, that the CNE sessions are geared at keeping nurses and midwives up-to-date with medical information.
“So it’s a very important thing because medicine is a very dynamic area and daily there are concepts that are being changed, new information that is being made available, discoveries and unless we have sessions where we are keeping ourselves informed very quickly; we’ll be outdated. So the CNE sessions are geared to do that”, he explained.
Further, in commending the nursing council for organising the CNEs, Dr Anthony advocated that there should be a switch in the time since during the day, most people are at work and it can be problematic. He added that for future sessions, there should be considerations for different timings or days since it will also allow more people to attend.
In closing, the Health Minister stated the sessions can be used to provide updated information on developments in the health sector.
“There are many topics that we want to convey to you, some of them might be in the clinical team, but I think there are other topics that we need to address because I’m not sure that many of you are acquainted with all the things that we are doing in the health sector, and sometimes these sessions can be used as a way of getting information across to people about what we’re doing in the health sector’, he stated.
Minister Anthony noted that some of the topics can be focused on the works being done for the elimination of Filaria, Hepatitis C and Diabetes.
Among those in attendance was Mr Sharir Chan from the Guyana Cancer Society and a Member of the Nurses and Midwives Council Guyana, along with the Head of West Demerara Regional Hospital Obstetrics and Gynecology (OB/GYN) Department, Dr Fareez Khan.
