Health
Articles and/or Speeches

Choose Nursing, Change Lives
The Building a Better Medical Facility
Budget Address

The Building of a Better Medical Facility

The plans to build a new hospital facility can only be described as long over due. The population outgrew the Myrtle Rigby Clinic a long time ago. The timing for the construction of a new facility however is suspicious. A building can be built in three months but can a functioning medical complex be established in the said time? I seriously doubt it. Structures never serve a purpose; it is the people within.

A functioning medical facility will require recruitment of a qualified staff. Doctors and nurses to start with. Previously the government has not been able to attract trained and qualified doctors and if by chance they do attract such professional, they find it difficult to keep them. Government has failed in keeping our very own qualified Turks Islanders within the government services, our Turks Islanders who have qualified as doctors have chosen to work in the private sector.

Why is it happening? Maybe they are not paid properly or maybe there is a total lack of job satisfaction in the government services or there are no opportunities for growth. I think it is a combination of all of the above. Under the circumstances do you really expect the professionals that were recruited to remain, or it they do will they give the best of their service? I think not

Government must understand that Medical Professionals are not laborers and should not be treated as such. These are people who have had benefit of a university education and look forward to much more than money, they need room for growth, they need to feel involved in what they are doing, they need to feel a part of the society in which they function. Government has been treating professionals the way they treat their cheap labor. Government should look at the way Canada, the United States and other countries go about recruiting their professionals, then they will understand why they fail to attract them and why if they do, they leave. When Government fails to attract trained and qualified professionals we the citizens lose out in the process. What happened to the Clinical Nursing Program that was set up to provide Turks Islanders with profession? Perhaps that has been abandon also.

Professionals should be given the option of making this country their home after their first contract. We need them for our future development; we need them to be Turks Islanders, to have this country at heart. They are few compared with the larger number of the categories that we invite to stay in our country; especially those who arrive with nothing and see this land as an opportunity to become rich. We need more Turks Islanders professionals; this in the turn will encourage our own qualified sons and daughters to return home to contribute to the development of our country.

The people of the Turks and Caicos Islands deserve a better medical facility, built for their benefit and not for the purpose of winning an election.