SHADOW Health Minister Louise Jackson has expressed outrage at this week's plan to cut the course of study for trainee nurses in half, claiming the Government is actively "dumbing down" nursing qualifications to attract Bermudians to hospital work.

She believes the new 'Nursing Education Pathway' programme will serve only to undermine Bermuda's failing health care system, providing ill patients with substandard nursing care.

The Bermuda Hospitals Board, the Health Ministry and Bermuda College this week jointly announced their intention to establish the first nursing programme on the island, allowing locals to qualify as nurses after only two years of study – half the time of the standard four-year Bachelor's of Science in Nursing degree.

"They are lowering the standard in order to get Bermudians into the hospitals," Mrs. Jackson (pictured above) told the Mid-Ocean News.

"You can't have a two-year nursing programme for a degree. A Bachelor's of Science is a four-year programme. They are bringing the level down, and the nurses currently working at King Edward and MAWI (Mid-Atlantic Wellness Institute) are furious about it."

Bermuda College's current arrangement with Hampton University in Virginia is called the "two-plus-two programme". It amounts to four years of study, with local nursing majors spending two years in Bermuda and two studying in the US, transferring their Bermuda College associate degree credits to Hampton University, then taking the necessary courses for a Bachelor's degree.

The new 'Nursing Pathway Programme', however, would see Bermudians qualifying as registered nurses without having to study overseas, gain any experience in a teaching hospital or complete a Bachelor's degree. The arrangement will see Bermuda College students sit their board examinations, called the NCLEX-RN, after a much-reduced course of study, becoming registered nurses able to practise in either of the two local hospitals.

The NCLEX-RN exam is the most basic of all nursing qualifications, intended only for entry level, to be used as a gateway to further training. This concerns the Shadow Health Minister, who bemoaned the state of the local healthcare system in an interview with the Mid-Ocean News.

"The state of our hospital is bad enough without dumbing down nursing qualifications," she said, adding that nurses currently employed at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital and MAWI have been in touch with her to complain about the plan.

On Wednesday, BHB's Chief Academic Officer Dr. Larita Alford defended the new programme, claiming that while Bermudians could indeed qualify as registered nurses without completing a degree, they would be "meeting a critical local industry need".

She added that students would be encouraged to finish their bachelor's degree after qualifying, although it would only be required for managerial or community nursing roles.

The initiative, which will commence next academic year, is aimed at rectifying a shortage of nurses on the island, and will seek to attract Bermudian-born students in particular to the nursing field. According to the CEO of KEMH David Hill, Bermuda currently recruits about 70 per cent of its nurses from overseas.

In a recent Royal Gazette careers supplement, the Bermuda Career Centre and BHB noted the lack of qualified Bermudian nurses, adding that "most of the recruitment for health care organisations is from other countries". The supplement went on to explain that "the nursing shortage is expected to intensify as baby boomers age and the need for health care grows".

The BHB actively recruits foreign nurses on international job web sites, many of which are focused on the Caribbean region. There are three roles currently listed on MedHunters.com's Caribbean network, including a position in Bermuda's Mental Health Services and a maternity nursing job at KEMH. The BHB also placed an ad on CaribbeanJobs.com recently, looking for a full-time intensive care nurse.