JENSEN LA VENDE Se­nior Re­porter

High Court Judge West­min James has award­ed a nurs­ing as­sis­tant $850,000 in dam­ages af­ter she was forced to re­tire med­ical­ly un­fit, fol­low­ing a fall at the Cen­tral Block of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal in 2018. The 53-year-old nurs­ing as­sis­tant, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied for fear she might be tar­get­ed, said that since the in­ci­dent, she has suf­fered a sig­nif­i­cant loss of earn­ings. The rul­ing was hand­ed down on Sep­tem­ber 23 af­ter the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty con­ced­ed li­a­bil­i­ty.

“Ul­ti­mate­ly, on June 21, 2024, I was forced in­to re­tire­ment on med­ical grounds, end­ing my ca­reer pre­ma­ture­ly. The fi­nan­cial im­pact is dev­as­tat­ing, and I not on­ly lost steady in­come from No­vem­ber 2022 on­ward but al­so the op­por­tu­ni­ty for fu­ture earn­ings, pro­mo­tions, and pen­sion con­tri­bu­tions. I have gone from be­ing fi­nan­cial­ly se­cure in a per­ma­nent nurs­ing role to be­ing de­pen­dent and un­cer­tain, with di­min­ished prospects of ever re­join­ing the work­force.”