Con­sul­tant physi­cian and CNC3’s “Ask the Doc­tor” host Dr Joel Teelucks­ingh is warn­ing that the on­go­ing dis­pute be­tween nurs­es and man­age­ment at the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) high­lights deep­er sys­temic is­sues in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pub­lic health­care sys­tem.

Speak­ing on Thurs­day’s pro­gramme, Teelucks­ingh said re­cent in­dus­tri­al ac­tion by nurs­es should not be dis­missed as a mere dis­rup­tion, but un­der­stood as a symp­tom of long-stand­ing, un­re­solved con­cerns.

“On the lo­cal scene, there are grow­ing con­cerns fol­low­ing protests by nurs­es across sec­tions of the pub­lic health sys­tem,” he not­ed. “Re­duc­ing this to just a dis­rup­tion miss­es the deep­er is­sue.”