SIX YEARS! Six years of sacrifice, exhaustion, and broken promises.
Six years of lies and abuse dressed up as education.
Six years of being broken, used, and discarded.
What began as hope became a system that stripped us of our passion, dignity, and belief that hard work matters. A system that crushed us, not trained us into professionals.
This is a journey that didn’t just cost us time, it cost us our health, our futures, time with our families and our faith and belief in justice.
We asked for transparency and human decency, but were met with intimidation, humiliation, and failure without explanation or accountability. We were not trained, we were used. Used until we were exhausted. Exploited to plug hospital staffing shortages, then blamed for collapsing under a system designed to break us. Hope was the bait. Silence was the punishment.
Yet we pushed through, disaster after disaster, stumbling blocks after stumbling blocks but was still met with cruelty instead of support. Targeted to fail for reasons never clearly explained, punished not for incompetence but for simply demanding fairness.
We were set up to fail, failed in bulk, and then punished for daring to ask why. A 100% failure rate should have triggered accountability. Instead, it triggered retaliation when we asked for answers.
We begged for a fourth chance not because we were incapable or lazy as was said, but because the system is cruel and unchecked. A 100% failure rate wasn’t a warning sign, it was a weapon and when we spoke up, we were marked.
We begged for another chance to show our worth and desire to be in this medical field but again silence, intimidation, and repeated failure was all we got.
From previously waiting for four months for our exam results we are now once again met with six weeks of silence. Not because it takes that long but because silence keeps people obedient. Silence used as control.
As young people and even those of us with children, we struggle daily with our mental health, sleep, survival and with trying to provide for our children while carrying the weight of a decision once believed would have changed our lives. Faith doesn’t feed our children. Hope doesn’t pay the bills or erase years of pressure, shame, and fear and our patience will not undo psychological damage.
To new students: enter with your eyes open and know that this system does not care about you. Prepare to endure an oppressive system that does not always value humanity or justice. Protect your mental health, document everything, trust nothing blindly, do not assume fairness. This is not just nursing school it is an oppressive, cult-like environment where being submissive matters more than competence. This isn’t nursing school. It’s control. Compliance over proficiency. Fear over learning. Break the students, then blame them for being broken.
We forever continue to fight not because it’s a paycheque but because nursing is our ultimate calling.
No profession built on care should operate like this or be this cruel. No profession built on care should destroy its future nurses.
This is a journey that has cost us everything.
Dashed Dreams
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It would be interesting to unpack the actual performances that resulted in failure to see how primary and secondary education within the education revolution helped, hindered or contributed to failure at this vocational level. Maybe the test-takers were ill-equipped in terms of comprehension and having a well-rounded general education to secondary level.
The piece is laden with emotion but very little practical or useful information.
Upon reading, I contacted nurses because I felt like there was another side to this story. I’ll just stop at you stating that you all begged for a FOURTH CHANCE!!!!
At some point, people need to take accountability and responsibility for their outcomes. Four chances you stated anah….not 1, 2 nor 3 but you got FOUR CHANCES!!!
Alignment of the curriculum content, delivery method, and evaluation process is predictive of the learner’s performance ( failure or success).
The writer spole about given for chances to prove tgay she has what it takes to be a nurse. The question one should ask , is that should the profession rewards mediocrity? Would a mediocre student transfers that mind set into the profession it?
Is the work , duties and responsibilities are analogous to the accounting profession where an error can be corrected by performing an adjusting journal entry? Certainly not, an error could be costly and cause the very life of a patient.
Something is NOT connecting if you take that long
to succeed. Can it be You’re not applying what you learnt OR the structure of the learning material is not handled right? Just asking.
I wonder what was meant by a fourth chance? I never knew so many chances at failure existed in a nursing program. The other concern is 100% failure rate. If this is so, then, there is a critical need to look beyond the students.
From what I’ve gathered the exam times are not realistic and cannot be accomplished even well seasoned nurses. It would seem that the exam structure was recently changed. But if 100% of students are able to pass the theory but cannot pass the practical then it indicates to me that the issue lies within the practical exam. There needs to be some sort of evaluation into the practical and how feasible it is for well trained and knowledgeable students to pass. Most students fault the time. So it may not be a case where they are not competent but simply slow. And speed is gained with experience. I’m hoping the new government or the board of the college investigates the matter.
Vincy Wannabe lawyer i am positive you do no hold an LLB to even pretend that you are a jurisst Doctor, but a lonely wollf parading in sheep clothing. From the time you pretend bto be a wannabe, you wojld have gone to law school and be a real lawyer.
A real lawyer would never state that you contacted nurses to get bonafide information. A real lawyer would be careful from where information is sourced, if you had said you contacted the nurses association, then I would have said that you are trying to exhibit qualities and characteristics of a lawyer.
In conclusion, you should gave us your name for the public is entitled to full disclosure after reading the nonsense that you are spewing. Enough is enough, I have no tolerence for someone who is try their base my noble profession.
I am with Vincy Lawyer…Nursing is a different vibe. That 1st chance, that 1/2 point to give you a pass may well result in someone’s death.
There are a lot more ways you can be of service to humanity. If you’re on chance 4 nursing is not it. Darn! Who afforded you a 2nd chance?
The Third-Party Deportee Bazaar: A Tailor’s Guide to Hemming the Truth
My father was a tailor. One of my fondest childhood memories involves sitting in his shop—not far from the sea—reading comic books while he stitched together illusions for a living.
Among his professional insights was this cheerful observation: a suit is a lie you wear on your body. Like the superheroes in my comic books, men dressed to hide what they really were.
The irony wasn’t lost on me that my father himself wore a suit daily, playing the English gentleman. Even as a child, I wondered: what monster is he concealing?
After watching enough fittings, I learned the disturbing truth—the man in the bespoke three-piece could be anyone. A philanthropist. A wife-beater. Sometimes both, depending on the day of the week.
Cut to: Present day political theatre.
We now have leaders who’ve mastered my father’s craft. They dress impeccably—power suits, silk ties, cuff links that cost more than your monthly salary—while behaving like hostages reading ransom notes. They’ve been summoned to the imperial principal’s office (diplomatically termed “a strategic dialogue”), handed their instructions, and returned home to perform the most exquisite piece of political tailoring since Orwell invented the Ministry of Truth.
Remember the Ministry of Truth? Those cheerful civil servants whose sole purpose was rewriting history so the Party’s current position always matched the historical record—even when it was the exact opposite of last week’s position? “We have always accepted deportees. We have never accepted deportees. We are magnanimously considering accepting deportees as a humanitarian gesture that was entirely our idea.”
The current deportee kabuki is particularly delicious.
Country A summons Country B’s leader. Country A says, “You will accept these people.” Not “would you,” not “could we discuss”—just “you will.” Country B’s leader sits there, probably wondering if his own suit is bulletproof, nods, flies home, adjusts his tie, and announces: “We have been invited to participate in a regional resettlement initiative, and we are carefully weighing our options.”
It’s the geopolitical equivalent of being dragged behind the woodshed, beaten with a stick, then limping back to explain you fell down the stairs—and expecting everyone to nod sympathetically at your clumsiness.
My father would appreciate the craftsmanship. The lie is perfectly tailored. No loose threads. Not a stitch out of place.
But here’s where the joke gets really dark:
Unlike my father’s customers—who at least chose their own humiliations, selected their own disguises—these leaders are fitted for clothes they didn’t order, in sizes that don’t fit, made from fabric they’d never choose. Then they parade around, smiling, insisting the emperor’s new clothes are haute couture.
And we, the audience, are expected to applaud the fashion show.
My childhood lesson endures: never trust the suit. The man wearing the cape might be Batman—or he might be the Joker. But the man insisting he chose to wear the straitjacket? That’s a different kind of villain entirely. The kind who thinks we can’t tell the difference between wool and chains.
The real horror isn’t that they’re lying. It’s that they think the suit fits.
The Ministry of Truth would be proud. They’ve outsourced the work to the very people being erased from the record. Efficiency at its finest.
—
The writer’s father spent his life making people look like something they weren’t. At least he had the decency to charge them for it.
Deportees not included. Tailoring of truth sold separately. Your dignity may vary.
I laugh, but not because the actual situation is funny. I do so because everyone is out of the woodwork trying to cast aspersions while making themselves look bad. A fourth chance? Miss, nursing is a very critical and serious profession, and without the intellectual capacity to be almost perfect, you need to stay far away from it because you’ll become a murderer. Ralph Gonsalves has served his nation with distinction; Vincentians decided he needed to leave. Let him and his administration go in peace. Stop making yourself look silly. The Africans have a saying: He who can’t dance says the yard is stony.
“Real lawyer” aka keyboard bully: Why do you feel like I care about your opinion of me? You really think highly of yourself 🥱