Pakistan on Thursday celebrated the legacy of Florence Nightingale, founder of the modern nursing profession, amidst a serious shortfall of qualified nurses. There is one trained nurse for every 4,636 patients in the country that is considered to be too few by international standards. 95 percent of these nurses are diploma holders and very few hold B.Sc nursing degree or postgraduate qualification.
A recently compiled data by Pakistan Medical and Nursing Professionals identified presence of 119 schools of nursing and 144 schools of midwifery. Regrettably, the standard of education in most of these institutions was found to be depressingly low. Although situation was much better in 14 institutions offering B.Sc Nursing Programmes, but these too were facing serious shortage of qualified and experienced teachers. A senior nurse and a physician told APP that the non-availability of qualified instructors is not the sole issue as misery of trainees in most of the schools aggravates due to non-availability of textbooks, teaching aid and resource material etc. Consequently, at the time of passing out from these poorly manned and equipped entities, nurses are neither well trained nor do they have sound theoretical knowledge, said Dr Aziz Khan Tank, President Pakistan College of Family Physicians.
He revealed there is not only shortage of qualified instructors, but a trend to employ nursing teachers without appropriate qualifications has appeared to severely effect the professional capacities of nurses. "To raise the standards of nursing education in the country we have to increase the number of qualified nursing instructors," he asserted.