“Unless we are making progress in our nursing every year, every month, every week, take my word for it we are going back.” Florence Nightingale Nurses are considered the backbone of the health care system.
They are the linchpin component across a wide continuum of care. In India, nurses make two third of health workforce. Despite being a vital link between the health sector and patient, yet the condition of nurses in India is very poor.
The nursing profession lacks strategic representation at the key decision making forums at both state and national levels. This apathy in the nursing profession is the major contributing factor to all the root problems and challenges faced by nurses. Nursing profession is being plagued with various problems some of these problems faced by nurses in India particularly in our UT J&K are shortage of staff, non-nursing roles, insufficient wages, fraudulent approval of nursing colleges, workplace mental violence, lack of recognition, workplace health hazards, lack of security, unclear promotion criteria, no proper in-service education system, lack of autonomy in work, nurse-patient ratio, bullying etc.
This is by no means a comprehensive list. These problems arise due to issues at the organizational, state and national level. It’s we, the nurses who are dealing with the realities of these issues on a daily basis. So the nurses should be key players in creating and finding solutions to these issues and the solution is to delve deeper into the roots of the problems and explore possible solutions to curb them. If we take a keen look on these issues, first and foremost important problem to solve is related with Nursing Council of the UT which is run by non-nursing professionals, whose recruitment was a vague process.
State Nursing Council is the main body in the state for the said profession, when its members know nothing about this profession what professional development or welfare activity would we expect from this regulatory body in our UT. In J&K, we have a good eligible nursing personnels who can run this council successfully. In order to make this council fruitful for the J&K, proper recruitment should be done for the council which would also fulfill the recommendations laid down by Indian Nursing Council (INC) for State Nursing Councils (SNCs).
Second most important issue is insufficient wages, not even providing minimum pay scale which was approved by the Supreme Court. You see in J&K, both private hospitals and nursing colleges pay not more than Rs.10000 even to PG holders of nursing, thus violating the law of minimum pay scale. Even though every year these colleges are being inspected yet no action is taken against them for violating various laws.
Law of minimum pay scale is the need of an hour which should be applied to nurses both in government and private sectors. One more main problem which actually is not a problem but a big form of corruption is related with recognition of Nursing Colleges in J&K. In our J &K, newly built nursing colleges are following a trend, whereby they on fang curriculum vitae of nursing personnels and make an agreement with them just for the day of inspection or some even recruit the staff and terminate them within a month or two after inspection.
Here in J&K we can see that one nurse is linked to many nursing colleges. Even if the SNC inspection body does recognise this fraudulent action on the part of nursing colleges, they unmind it and provide an approval to the college. This not only makes the students to suffer but also increases the unemployment among nurses. So there should be proper verification of all the requirements of nursing colleges and just one inspection should not be the criteria for the approval of recognition.
For me, shortage of nursing staff whether in hospitals or nursing colleges is an unacceptable matter in the place like J&K where you have a large number of unemployed nursing candidates. We see in hospitals and nursing colleges of J&K whether private or government, we have a great number of vacancies of nurses which are left unfilled or some posts have been occupied by non nursing professionals like you see principals of various private as well as government nursing colleges are doctors who are not eligible at all for the said post because their professional backgrounds are wholly and solely different from our nursing profession.
These issues need to work out for mitigating unemployment pressure among nurses and for the improvement of the Quality Nursing Care by lightening the workload of already overburdened nurses in colleges and hospitals.
Someone has rightly said that “you don’t build a house without its foundation, you don’t build a hospital without a nurse”, but it is very unfortunate to say that all the major nursing posts such as Nursing Director / Chief Nursing Officer, Deputy Nursing Director/ Deputy Nursing Officer, Matron, Nursing Supervisor and Deputy Nursing Supervisors etc are vacant or have been occupied either by doctors or under qualified staff which lacks efficacy in management thus making the ground level nursing workers to suffer from such a mismanagement.
One more curse in nursing profession is the deputation of the staff where a single person occupies two posts at a same time thus rendering ineffective job roles at both places or keeping the one place totally devoid of the functions of the post occupied which is a menace to the profession.
These deficits in the nursing profession disrupt the whole nursing care. Within a robust health care system access to the skilled motivated and supporting nursing care for all people and everywhere is of paramount importance. So it is important to recognise the problems faced by nurses and to solve them on timely basis.(KINS)
Iqbal Majid Dar
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