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Nursing education in India suffers poor quality of training, inequitable distribution, and non-standardised practices
Condition of nurses in India
- India’s nursing workforce is about two-thirds of its health workforce.
- Its ratio of 1.7 nurses per 1,000 population is 43% less than the World Health Or- ganisation norm; it needs 2.4 mil- lion nurses to meet the norm.
- In addition to the low number of nurses, the sector is dogged by structural challenges that lead to poor quality of training, inequita- ble distribution, and non-standar- dised practices.
Challenges
- Uneven regulation: Nursing education in India has a wide array of certificate, diploma, and degree programmes for clinical and non-clinical nursing roles. The quality of training of nurses is diminished by the uneven and weak regulation.
- The Indian Nursing Council Act covered only the educational aspect of nursing. There were no norms for service and patient care. There are no fixed details of the nurse to patient ratio, staffing norms and salaries.
- Gaps in skills and competencies: There are insufficient postgraduate courses to develop skills in specialties, and address critical faculty shortages both in terms of quality and quantity. These factors have led to, with no clear career trajectory for nurses.
- Regional imbalance
- Multiple entry points to the nursing courses and lack of integration of the diploma and degree courses diminish the quality of training.
- Poor regulations
- Nurses in India have no guidelines on the scope of their practice and have no prescribed standards of care. This may endanger patient safety. It is a major reason for the low legitimacy of the nursing practice and the profession.
- The mismatch of the role description and remuneration that befits the role sets the stage for the exploitation of nurses.
- Migration of qualified nurses towards foreign shores takes place due to less remuneration.
- The Consumer Protection Act which protects the rights and safety of patients as consumers, holds only the doctor and the hospital liable for medico-legal issues; nurses are out of the purview of the Act.
Basic institutional reforms will be required to address the three issues.
Source: The Hindu
