Lawsuit looms over Excelsior as nursing students in limbo

Excelsior Community College (ECC) is facing the threat of a lawsuit following claims from several final-year nursing students that senior administrators have sabotaged their prospects of completing the Bachelor of Science nursing programme.

The students have accused the school of failing to honour an agreement signed between the institution and The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, the franchise holder for the programme, to allow them to make up for hours missed to complete the degree.

However, Dr Philmore McCarthy, principal of ECC, has denied the claims, noting that the programme is governed by the Nursing Council of Jamaica (NCJ) regulations, some of which were not met by 11 students.

“As such, [they] would have been denied. So I don’t see how they can claim sabotage,” McCarthy said in a Gleaner interview on Friday.

“The issue is not with the college in terms of the regulations. We just have to adhere to what exists, and as principal, that has been our position.”

The ECC head said that administrators have no authority to go against the regulations.

The 11 students were advised in April that they would not be allowed to sit the May 2 final exam for the Leadership and Management course because they had failed to meet the minimum 85 per cent attendance requirement for the class.

Those absences, The Gleaner was informed, were caused by health-related issues ranging from COVID-19 to thyroid cancer.

The issue was brought to the attention of McCarthy for his intervention after the students reported that an administrator had indicated that they would have to sit out a year and complete the programme during the summer of 2023.

“She said, ‘I have no mercy. Mercy done and only I alone can give mercy,’” said one of the students, who asked not to be identified, in a Gleaner interview last week.

The student said that the principal intervened and they were able to sit the exams, which they all reportedly passed.

They were told that to make up for the missed hours, they would have to work at the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH).

But after that tour of service, their dilemma re-emerged on July 6 when the affected group learnt that they were left off the Nursing Council’s Span of Duty (practical) Examination list for the following day.

On July 15, the students were summoned to a meeting with the dean of school of nursing, Mark Shand, and vice-principal of academic affairs, Dr Zaria Malcom-Walker, and informed that they would not be allowed to sit the exam before completing several requirements.

Those requirements, according to a July 18 letter seen by The Gleaner, were set for completion between July 2022 and January 2023.

The letter also said that the next available sitting for the Nursing Council’s Span exam would be in December or early January.

The communiqué has doomed the chances of sitting the October theory-based Regional Examination for Nurse Registration (RENR). The next available sitting is in April.

“There are times when I just break down and cry. I think I’m at a point where I’m severely depressed,” the student said of the matter.

Another student said that she has been left “devastated” by the latest development, having already been behind by a year because of financial struggles.

The student said a positive turn on her family’s financial challenges hinges on completing the degree programme this year.

“I’m being assisted by my other colleagues in the programme with money to complete it. Knowing that they are asking me to pay additional fees is rattling my mind. I wasn’t able to tell this to my family. All I could do was cry and hide it. They still don’t know,” the student said.

“I am despondent,” another student disclosed. “I am low, low, low. I have no fight left in me. The $3 million that I spent for tuition fees I should have invested. We are working people who took study leave. It is not easy to sit out a year.”

The student said that the group had learnt that ECC did not adhere to the agreement with The UWI on the matter.

“They are victimising us and sabotaging our degrees because of their ego. Anything SONAH (School of Nursing and Allied Health) decides on goes, even if it is against our welfare,” the student said.

Dean of Student Services Paulette Roberts-Dowe, when contacted by The Gleaner, said: “The students are not lying.”

Email correspondence among ECC’s senior administrators, and which has been seen by The Gleaner, revealed a deep rift among the institution’s management and expressions of concern about the legal ramifications.

In a July 13 letter addressed to the principal, attorney-at-law Petrina Williams, who is representing one of the students, made several demands, including a “rational” approach that would allow her client and the 10 other students to meet the outstanding hours.

Williams also demanded that arrangements be put in place for the students to meet requirements that would enable them to sit the SPAN of Duty exam and RENR.

She said that all relevant methods must be employed to afford the students the opportunity to complete the programme on schedule with their cohort by July 31.

“Should you fail to honour the requests made herein with vital consideration being given to the mentioned timelines, I have been instructed to commence legal proceedings in court,” the letter read.

Both The UWI and ECC had earlier met on July 6 to discuss the matter, according to the summary of discussion and agreement seen by The Gleaner and which was later confirmed by Dr Donovan Stanberry, UWI campus registrar.

The summary showed that ECC was scolded by The UWI for allowing the students to sit the Leadership and Management exam despite not meeting the 85 per cent attendance threshold.

While acknowledging that the infraction was a serious breach of The UWI’s regulations. Stanberry said in a Gleaner interview Sunday that he was “alarmed” that the issue had not been resolved.

The meeting concluded that ECC must implement a mechanism that would allow the affected students to complete the requirements of the programme, including the Span of Duty Examination ahead of the Nursing Council’s July 21 RENR application deadline and complete the final summer term courses by July 31, 2022.

“My recollection is that we were not prescriptive in how the students could make up the hours. We just wanted to know that they made up the hours with something substantial,” Stanberry said.

“It’s our programme at The UWI. We set the standards and we were very clear on what needed to be done. We tried to be as student centred as possible to accommodate the students doing it this year so as not to have to sit out another year without compromising anything they had to do,” he said.

The Gleaner contacted Dr Leila McWhinney-Dehaney, chair of the NCJ, who said that the matter has not been brought to the council’s attention.

The former chief nurse of Jamaica said the council has regulations regarding how students progress through their period of study in nursing schools.

kimone.francis@gleanerjm.com