More than 100 NCU nursing graduates licensed

Northern Caribbean University (NCU) has awarded Nadiesha Brown for being the Most Outstanding Nursing Student, having achieved a grade point average of 3.65. She was recognised during the virtual Nurses’ Pinning and Thanksgiving Service held last Saturday.

More than 100 prospective nursing graduates, who had passed the Regional Examination Nurse Registration, were recognised and pinned as registered nurses licensed to operate in the Caribbean. The event was held a day before the university’s virtual commencement ceremony where these nursing students were among more than 800 graduands who were conferred with diplomas and degrees.

The NCU Department of Nursing, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, presented the Long Service Award to employee of 19 years, Jaunell Latty Miller. Outstanding Preceptor was awarded to alumna Jannette Hendricks-Graham who supervises nursing students doing their clinicals at one of the public hospitals.

Keynote speaker, Dr Sian Scott Gray, who graduated from the NCU nursing programme in 2003, encouraged the nursing graduates to have an I-can attitude and to choose positivity, excellence, love, service and action over negativity, mediocrity, insensitivity, inefficiency, and inactivity. She implored the nurses not to use lack of resources as an excuse to offer quality services inconsistently.

“…Will you allow shortage of resources on the ward, stressful working conditions and inadequate pay to deter you from giving quality care?” she asked. “Do you know that any of your relatives could one day become a patient? So, if you leave a trail of poor nursing behind, that kind of nursing will somehow find its way back to you and yours!” she added.

Scott Gray encouraged the NCU nursing graduates to be leaders and role models. “The day you chose to be a nurse, you chose to be a leader, wherever you are employed. You are destined to be leaders and to become an example to those who come behind you.” Speaking on the biblical theme for the thanksgiving service – ‘Pressed but not crushed, perplexed but not dismayed; destined to lead’ – Scott Gray advised the nursing graduates to use their adversities to lessons instead of stumbling blocks.

“Your trials are tools to equip you,” advised the doctor. She spoke to the need for nurses to have the right mindset that is not focused on love for self but love for humanity. Linking love for humanity and the nurse’s capacity to succeed with a relationship with God, she stated, “Your capacity to overcome is directly proportional to the relationship you have with the Lord.”