UHWI nurses stage sickout over bed shortages, overcrowding and missing supplies

Nurses at the University Hospital of the West Indies staged a sickout on Tuesday morning, saying overcrowded wards, too few beds and severe resource gaps have made it impossible to provide safe patient care at the public hospital.

Staff gathered at the facility's emergency department to press for change. They stressed the protest was not about wages. "This is not about the money. So, I don't want this to be twisted. This is about patient care. And the manner in which we have to be working is not nothing near safe," one nurse said.

Workers said they are routinely forced to treat patients without adequate medication and even on the floor when beds are unavailable. "We have no beds. We have to be medicating without medication. We have patients on the floor at this time. This cannot be acceptable," a nurse told reporters.

Staffing levels drew equal concern. "So, if you have one nurse to 20 patients, some of those patients are going to be left to die. That's the truth. That's the hard truth. So, one nurse can do so much and no more. So, we want we want beds on the ward and functioning beds on the ward that can take the patients from us at A&E," one nurse said.

Among items reported to be in short supply were ECG machines, needles, syringes and emergency drugs. Nurses said they sometimes walked across the hospital searching for medications or blood supplies needed for urgent cases.

One nurse described conditions from the previous day, when the emergency area was packed. An 88-year-old patient with what staff described as a right infraction sat in a wheelchair, alongside a woman with an ectopic pregnancy and another patient in diabetic ketoacidosis. The nurse said placing a urinary catheter required help from two other colleagues, with one patient's leg resting on a counter because proper treatment space was unavailable.

"We are expected to be functioning as octopus and we're expected to be giving post-op patient care in an emergency setting. This is the only emergency room that has a ward assigned to it," the nurse added.

The Northeastern Nurses Association of Jamaica said nurses face a continuous blame game when hospital conditions deteriorate. It was also reported that the morning shift on Tuesday did not relieve the night shift, amid concerns over working conditions and staff-to-patient ratios. Further information was awaited from the university.

Earlier this month, Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett linked healthcare standards to Jamaica's tourism brand. "Every time a visitor arrives in Jamaica healthy and leaves healthy, we have strengthened our brand. Every time a visitor encounters poor health standards, we have damaged our brand," he said.

Nurses argued local patients bear the daily burden of systemic failures. "It is not just a yesterday issue. It's a chronic issue here. We have been dealing with it and we have been trying to make blood out of stone and it's not We are not We just cannot do it anymore. We are fed up. We are tired. We are overstimulated. We are overworked," one said.