The Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ) is set to meet with the Ministry of Finance and Public Service on Monday (January 15), to discuss outstanding matters of the compensation review after a high number of nurses called in sick in three hospitals in the parishes of Kingston and St. Catherine on Friday.

The NAJ, in a statement on Friday, said its negotiation team was meeting to strategise for the meeting.

The Ministry of Health and Wellness was forced to resort to graduate nurses after on-call nurses staged a sick-out.

Errol Green, regional director of South East Regional Health Authority (SERHA) said the Spanish Town, Kingston Public and Victoria Jubilee hospitals were impacted as by Friday’s sick-out.

“In three of our hospitals, we have seen a higher number than normal amount of nurses reporting being sick. At KPH, we expected 176 [nurses] to include 10 nurse managers, 72 of those 176 did not show up. For Victoria Jubilee, we expected 51 nurses and midwives, 13 did not show, 38 were present. For Spanish Town Hospital we expected 70 and 22 of them did not show up,” Green said.

The SERHA regional director said nurses were present for work at the other hospitals in the region.

“What we did we had our emergency and contingency plans in place. We were fortunate to have had some new nurses who recently graduated and were recently licensed by the nursing council. Some of them started on Monday, some of them started last week so they were in orientation so we were able to pull all of them from orientation and press them into service,” he explained.

Scores of nurses have reportedly called in sick to register their frustration with the Government’s compensation package.