The original article can be found in: Barbados Advocate By Kerri Gooding
Recently at the General Annual Business meeting held at the Barbados Nurses Association, President Blondelle Mullin spoke with the Barbados Advocate and expressed concern over the physical security of nurses island-wide.
Previously, over a year ago, the complaint of inadequate security in place at the various units across the island was made known by Mullin, however today, though incidents have decreased, she is still not pleased with the measures in place. She also highlighted that the working relationship between some security personnel and nurses, leaves much to be desired.
Mullin further noted that, “Security at the institutions has been improved slightly and the administrators have tried their best to help out in that department, and I don’t think that there have been problems of such recently, but, in terms of the adequate security, I don’t think that there is still adequate security.”With regard to the security of nurses, Mullin also pinpointed the assigned security personnel in some cases as another problem. She said, “Sometimes on the actual units, the attitude of the clients towards the nursing staff, that still needs to be addressed.” Continuing, she added, “As we know, most of the time the security officers would say that they are there to protect the building and not the personnel, so then the personnel have to look after themselves. So that is the biggest issue we have.”
To aid in improving the situation to date, Mullin pointed out that there has been increased vigilance by the nurses. Furthermore, “They actually protect their stuff so we haven’t had any problems at the moment, but a great deal still has to be done in security for the institutions.”
