The man­age­ment of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA), which is re­spon­si­ble for the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) in Mt Hope, has be­gun hir­ing new nurs­es to help al­le­vi­ate some of the staffing is­sues caused by sick­out ac­tion from nurs­es cur­rent­ly in the sys­tem.

Guardian Me­dia spoke with some of the 50 new nurs­es who had ori­en­ta­tion at the fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day, but many of them said they did not want to speak much on the is­sue. They not­ed, how­ev­er, that they were the sec­ond batch of nurs­es go­ing through the ori­en­ta­tion process this week.

Oth­er health­care staff said while the sit­u­a­tion at the hos­pi­tal was bet­ter than it was on the week­end, when the sick­out ac­tion was ini­ti­at­ed, there still re­mains an is­sue with nurs­es not show­ing up for work. One med­ical staff said pa­tients on wards where nurs­es did not show up for du­ty were be­ing trans­ferred to oth­er wards with nurs­es to man­age the sit­u­a­tion.