Change of guard at JNF Hospital’s Emergency Room: Dr Carlton Williams replaces Dr Dwain Archibald

Basseterre, St. Kitts, July 7, 2025 (JNF Hospital Communications) — After serving as Medical Officer at the Joseph Nathaniel France (JNF) General Hospital’s Emergency Room for seventeen years, Dr Dwain Archibald has at his own request been transferred to the Community Based Health Services where he will serve as a District Medical Officer.

Taking over from him will not be an entirely new face, as Dr Carlton Williams has served as a physician at the JNF General Hospital since 2016 working at the Emergency Room save for periods when his services would be required at the Pogson Hospital, and health centres at St. Paul’s, Dieppe Bay, Sandy Point, and Old Road. He also served in Nevis for a month.  

Dr Jenson Morton, Director of Health Institutions within the Ministry of Health, noted that Dr Archibald was the physician in the Emergency Room for 17 years. The last ten of those years Dr Archibald was the head of the Emergency Room, and according to Dr Morton, he served with distinction and he was known to be an excellent and dependable doctor.

“He actually, himself, had indicated a willingness to grow and to do a few other things,” Dr Morton observed. “So he would have made the decision that he wished to become a District Medical Officer, and because of his many years of service, that wish was fulfilled and he was allowed to be transferred to Community Based Health Services.”

While Dr Archibald will be deployed as the District Medical Officer operating out of the Basseterre Health Centre, he will also be temporarily serving as the physician for His Majesty’s Prison and the Cardin Home.

“Our experience here from 2007 was great,” reminisced Dr Archibald. “I learned medicine, I learned the general public, I learned what sick people needed to get better, and that means treating people holistically from the clinics to the social issues, hearing their mouths speaking to them, and basically advising them on how to get better.”

He however pointed out that whereas the Emergency Room is a fast paced department where one sees many persons in one shift, he felt that he would have contributed at least enough to that department, and it was time for him to contribute to the community which he admittedly said is a bit slow paced which he compared to going on the other end of the spectrum.

“I can see the long-term treatment and long-term treatment plans, and ensure that patients maintain their long-term treatment plans and basically mitigate the reason for them coming to the hospital and to emergency room by applying the knowledge I have from working in the emergency room, and applying the new-found knowledge that I have working in the community,” concluded Dr Archibald.

Coming in as the new Head of the Emergency Room at the JNF General Hospital is Cuba trained Dr Carlton Williams who started working at the health institution in December 2016 by doing his rotation in Clinical Enrichment Programme, which is similar to an internship that they do right after medical school.

“My hope for the department is for it to continue to serve the public,” assured Dr Williams. “We will continue to provide high quality patient care, continue to improve staff relations with each other and with the public, as well as to improve our knowledge on how best to look after persons, how best to deal with emergencies, and how best we can assist in administering life-saving interventions to patients.”

The new head at the Emergency Room highlighted that when his predecessor served, the hospital did not have an Emergency Room Specialist. This changed last month when, on Tuesday June 17, Dr Jason Ifill reported for duty at the JNF General Hospital as its first Emergency Room Specialist which marked a turning point for the national health institution.  

“Now that we have an Emergency Room Department Specialist on the team, hopefully it would make things run a lot smoother, and help us to increase our own knowledge and the way we deal with patients,” said Dr Williams. “It will help us to bring First World solutions to our Second and Third World problems.”

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