Nursing standards for the Caribbean community (Caricom) and Bermuda were discussed this week at the Regional Nursing Body's (RNB) annual general meeting on the Island.

On Wednesday the 18 delegates, observers and networking partners discussed human resources, marketing, policy making and education as ways of bringing nursing standards into the 21st century.

RNB chairperson Aberdine Browne said the role of the body was to discuss nursing issues, propose improvements and implement changes.

The body, which got its start 25 years ago, has been able to create standardised examinations for nurse registration, community and hospital nursing standards and develop a human resources management database.

The future of nursing lies in the areas of human resources, marketing and policy formulation, Mrs. Browne said yesterday.

"During the conference we discussed the proper recruitment of nurses,'' she said.

"In the past, nurses may not have been hired based on any scientific qualifications, but we are looking into having a standard minimum requirement.'' She added that the development of continuing education for nursing leaders and improvement of specialised services and practices were other areas the RNB discussed.

The body also intends to develop a marketing plan that will help get secondary students into nursing.

Mrs. Browne said there was a shortage of nurses in some of the Caricom countries but noted the trend seemed to be cyclical.

"Places like Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica do have a shortage of nurses, but it seems to be because the nurses are moving to other Caricom countries,'' she said.

She added that it seemed the trend was for the nurses to return or for others to replace them.

Policy formulation -- a new area for RNB -- was one of the final areas that was discussed.

RNB now intends, through consultation with each countries' Ministers of Health, to implement standardised nursing practices at the regional and national level.

"We are looking at a revision of health care legislation across all the Cari-countries so that it takes into consideration the specialised services and generally sounds the same from country to country,'' said Mrs. Browne.

Education was another big topic of discussion at the conference.

Mrs. Browne said the RNB would like to see responsibility for nursing schools transfer from the Ministry of Health to the Ministry of Education within Caricom countries.

They would also like to see education standardised across the different schools so nurses' qualifications would be the same in each country.

The only major drawback the RNB has experienced thus far is on the financial front.

"When we implement a practice we are expected to do so out of the individual budgets from each country,'' Mrs. Browne said.

"There are so many things that we want and there is never enough money to do them all.'' HEALTH HTH