Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, Idi Stu­art, says a new pol­i­cy es­tab­lish­ing a six-to-one pa­tient-to-nurse ra­tio will take ef­fect on April 28.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Stu­art said the ra­tio has been ap­proved but has not yet been im­ple­ment­ed by the Min­is­ter of Health. How­ev­er, the as­so­ci­a­tion plans to im­ple­ment the pol­i­cy it­self.

“Right now, there is a pol­i­cy on the Min­is­ter of Health’s desk called the pa­tient-to-staff ra­tio. It’s some­thing the as­so­ci­a­tion has been call­ing for nu­mer­ous years. Every com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to health­care over the last decade has point­ed out that the is­sue of pa­tient-to-staff ra­tio is one of the sin­gle con­trib­u­tors of in­creas­es in mor­tal­i­ty. What we are in­struct­ing our nurs­ing per­son­nel to do while the Min­is­ter of Health de­lays pub­li­cis­ing and ap­prov­ing that pa­tient-to-staff ra­tio, the nurs­ing as­so­ci­a­tion is go­ing to im­ple­ment the pa­tient-to-staff ra­tio,” Stu­art said.