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The unavailability of a sufficient number of tutors to deliver courses within the nursing programme curriculum is currently being addressed by the Ministry of Health.The focus in this regard, according to Minister within the Health Ministry, Dr Bheri Ramsarran, is on rehiring retired tutors on short-term contracts, a feature which has already been implemented at the Georgetown and New Amsterdam Schools of Nursing.He said, though, that not only has the ministry been losing tutors who are nurses, but also tutors in general.According to the minister, it was anticipated that, with the introduction of the Bachelor of Nursing Programme which is offered at the University of Guyana, some of the graduates would have opted to venture into the teaching stream.However, he noted, most were attracted to other special, prestigious programmes.According to Minister Ramsarran, the ministry is not only looking to recruit tutors who can start working right away, but is also working towards upgrading the skills of persons who have expressed an interest in tutoring.The minister said that a decision was made to select some of those graduates to upgrade them to the level required for tutoring the nursing programme.“We might have a person who wants to be a tutor but she doesn’t have Midwifery, or she has Midwifery but does not have certain hours of coaching in Pedagogic…So we have three Sisters we are bringing up to speed. They have been inducted into the recently started Midwifery course at the Georgetown School of Nursing, and we hope that they now will have very good training, and when they return to the classrooms to be tutors they will be better grounded.”And in recognition of the fact that classroom attendances are now larger than usual, the minister said that the notion of “staggering” is being contemplated.“We might have persons who are clinically active…but who are capable of teaching. However, because of the commitment to their clinical work and their contract, they may not be able to come to the classroom during fixed hours. So an innovative method that we are exploring is to have those persons teach in the off-hours.”This, according to the minister, could see nursing students not only attending classes from 08:00 to 16:00 hours, but they could also be subjected to taking evening classes, as is customary at the University of Guyana.“They will have the same classes, but maybe with a different tutor…Those are things that we are looking at. In the meantime, I believe that our tutors are trying their best under extreme conditions.”