Brittany Baptis is a nurse in the Caribbean at Scarborough General Hospital in Trinidad and Tobago. Today is her day off and she smiles as she reveals when she knew that she would work in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) to treat the patients of Coved-19.
"I was a little apprehensive, because when coming from the medical ward, we didn't really know the rules and function of an ICU. I had no formal training, I had little knowledge about how the ventilator worked, Settings and these things. "
By the end of September 2020, Brittany was trained and introduced into the ICU as part of an integrated team of health professionals, working with new skills and competencies. She was one of a cadre of 82 nurses from 7 Caribbean countries who attended a 4-week training course to learn new skills and competencies to work in the ICU. These nurses are now making a significant contribution to providing critical care to COVID-19 patients in Caribbean hospitals.
This is critical to the achievement of Universal Health Coverage (UHC), which relies on adequate, evenly distributed and well-performing health enforcement. The arrival of COVID-19 has given a tough challenge to progress in this area.