Dr Mein advocates importance of higher education for nurses with President Ramkalawan |23 October 2021
Dr Mein in a souvenir photograph with President Ramkalawan (Photo: Joena Meme)
President Wavel Ramkalawan met with chief nursing officer, Gylian Mein, at State House yesterday in appreciation of her achievement as the first nurse in Seychelles to earn a doctoral degree in nursing.
Dr Mein recently graduated from the Chamberlain University of Illinois, USA with distinction in doctoral degree following three years of studies.
Following the meeting yesterday morning, Dr Mein noted that she advocated the importance of higher education for nurses in Seychelles to President Ramkalawan.
“We both noted that this should continue despite the economic crisis. We have to educate our nurses because research has proven that having nurses who are educated at a higher level, the services to patients and clients improve significantly,” stated Dr Mein.
“Additionally, I advocated for the programme for nurse practitioners, which we had planned to start but have not been able to do so far. We want our nurses in Seychelles to become nurse practitioners and that would also be a first for Seychelles.”
Although both nurses and nurse practitioners focus on patient observation and care, the largest difference between the two is that nurse practitioners are permitted to prescribe treatments, order tests and diagnose patients while nurses are not.
“We started looking into collaboration between the NIHSS (National Institute for Health and Social Studies) and various universities but this has been put on hold for economic reasons, so I advocated to continue on this path of increasing capacity of the nurse workforce,” added Dr Mein.
The quality of medical service was also a point of discussion during Dr Mein’s meeting with the President, whereby the latter called for improved level of services in health facilities.
In response to the President, Dr Mein committed to finding ways to improve the level of care given by nurses in the community and at the hospital.
“There aren’t many issues relating to care as such aside from a need for more communication and compassion from the medical staff so we will look into that.”
Dr Mein noted that her three years of studies for her doctorate came with a lot of challenges especially given the pressure brought on by Covid-19.
Nonetheless, she persevered and chose to not put off her studies and now hopes to bring effective and positive changes in the public health sector with her newly gained knowledge.