WHO dedicated this year theme to Support nurses by calling it as ‘year of the nurses and midwives’ Nursing Now is a global campaign to increase nurses profile.
Nursing Now is a global platform to share the activities of nurses, association and institution and build a better rapport. Nightingale Challenge is another part of this movement where health institutions are taking initiatives to organise some program (leadership or research) for their staff. They are expecting heath care institution to invest in Nursing.
What should ‘nursing now’ focus in India?
Majority of the health care institution who applied for nightingale Challenge are from private sector, education institutions. What are they doing under this challenge? Do they have an impact on nurses empowerment?
Nursing directorates at all state: These should be occupied by the nurses rather than physicians or any other professionals.
Nursing Education standard: Stop non attending classes, build skill based career pathways based on need to this community, teacher and student standard, increase public education institutions, corruption at INC, and reformation of INC
Nursing practice: skill based career pathways at the state owned hospital, respect the skills and sanction autonomy of practice to ANM, Nurses and Community Health Officers as per their assigned responsibility. Continuing Practical Based skill training and certification so that they can practice.
Nursing Research: Research is a part of Bachelor and Diploma course. There are more than 20000 nurses per year completing Masters in Nursing in 9 different specialities. Central government hospital themselves have more than 1000 nurses with MSc ,underutilised.
Stop Contratualisation: This has become a magic bullet for HRH issue. This is against the dignity of labor and is inhuman.
Regular recruitment: every second year all institution should call for vacancies and recruit health workforce. Kalawati Saran Children Hospital , new delhi, did not recruit nurses for 10 years and only last year they filled few of their vacancies.
We are working to motivate nurses and ANM to write their issues and experience so that they can be heard. Other association with long history and government institution should stop showing the propoganda of support without saying for what they are supporting for. They have enough power, finances and manpower to take these challenges and work on.
To summarise let me re-emphasise that Nursing now in India should redirect the focus to the real challenges faced by the nurses of India who are working day in and out despite these shortcomings and pouring their heart and soul in patient care.
Good article ……I congratulate Santhosh sir , As per my knowledge nurses are not taking part in policy making ,All nursing leader should involved in health care policy making system.hope for the good , in India we were lacking in involvement of policy making &my suggestion to All nursing leader take active role in policy making and clinical research,
Good article ……I congratulate Santhosh on this well written article….our profession biggest problem is that had grown in to profession.it is just under the will and wish of doctors. Our job description described by them .our nurse to patient ratio is decided by them. This is my observation in government hospitals. Solution for this had to be sought.
Nursing Now should be entirely updated concept of Nursing then..!! Removing all stigma attached to this noble profession,we need to think and act progressively….Nurses now are no more merely an injection nurses, things have changed,it’s a complete full fledged profession now..!
Awareness is very much essential in checking the invaders entry in this profession.Why doctors are holding high positions that are meant to nurses..? Why can’t we stand strong in raising voice against this..? Why is our profession still not an independent profession..?
Things must change, research in Nursing should be given prime importance. Cadre should be well structured in Nursing academic as well as clinical sides.
What we must be looking forward is ” Nurse lead clinics ” functioning everywhere….
Very well written Mr Santosh, awareness among Nurse’s regarding Nursing Now is very essential at this point of time, and you are trying to show limelight on such issue.
well-done…!
@Santosh. Aptly covered.
Many front line nursing voices and thier problems are still unheard. Instead of beating around the bush all the times, as you mentioned let’s focus on the essential issues.
Nursing Now India should not be like a movement of nurses alone but the society as whole come forward to support the nurses, the people who got benefit from the nursing services should speak up and stand for us. There are problems with administration, research, teaching and clinical service too. but why are we limiting to these 4 topics. why cant we see expanded roles such as nurse engineer, nurse biomedical scientist, nurse scientist, legal nurse , scope is limited to our theories but not in reality. now we should think of expanding the profession. just see the national bodies of importance in India and find out how many nurses were given place and find the contributions from nursing. Blaming some one is easy but we have to blame ourselves too before blaming others. we should not be jealous of others, but for sure, health worker equity is to be addressed. There is need for research body, directorate and also a common portal dedicated for nursing so that public and nurses know what nurses are doing for the society
Very well quoted sir …These all are High priority changes needed to bring the transformation from dependency to autonomy
Thank you Santhosh for bringing-up many things here. I would like to highlight few things. It’s the time to think of specific tasks to be considered under this campaign by the authoritative bodies in India.
My observation is that we need to strengthen policy level nursing research. This has to be cultivated right from the beginning. In this regard, a refresher in-service training for teaching faculties to keep them informed with the newer scientific approaches becomes very important. In addition to this, rather opening-up of new nursing schools or colleges, improving the quality of teaching should be the priority.
This is the time to scale-up successful nurse-based programmes in India. India’s recognition on Midwives program in recent days was much appreciated. However, government should now consider a nation-wide scale-up of this program. The current health policy recognises nurses’ role and empowers nurse as a community health officer which is again welcoming to see.
But the major concern is towards the operational issues which nurses have been facing till date; among which monthly wages and job insecurities are the major ones. To address this, innovative measures has to be thought through. Nursing bodies should emerge as powerful pressure group for Nurse-friendly policies. At each level of health care system, developing a nurse grievance mechanism could be one of such measures which help nurses in case of physical and mental distress.
Hi Prashanti, Thanks for an additional Information. There are enough studies to prove the Nurse-Midwifery led care but still there are some more studies going on. Currently Fernandes Hospital, Hyderabad in collaboration is doing the Research on Midwifery lead care. Let us hope we will see soon the positive result.
Hard truth. Well said 👏🏼