Pakistan Nursing Council (PNC) has refused to recognise the newly established Children’s Hospital College of Nursing for their BSc and Post RN nursing classes owing to a lack of the required infrastructure and faculty members, Pakistan Today has learnt. Nursing colleges are being introduced because it has been decided that all nursing schools of the country would be closed by 2013, after which only BSc nursing would be encouraged.
Children’s Hospital’s management decided to utilize senior staff nurses as faculty members and most of them were issued their joining letters as well, but no one meets the Pakistan Nursing Council (PNC)’s criteria, said sources. According to the PNC and Higher Education Commission (HEC) checklist for registrations, an institution can only be registered if it has its own building according to students’ needs, has one teacher over 25 nursing students, one teacher over three students for practical teaching. It calls for an experienced faculty.
Children’s Hospital sources disclosed that more then 300 nursing students were doing their three year diploma in general nursing and one year midwife course in the Children’s Hospitals’ School of Nursing. Children Hospital College of Nursing Principal Kausar Perveen told Pakistan Today that PNC had increased their limit for about two months to meet the criteria and main hurdle to establish college of nursing was the low standard of faculty members and building requirements. She told that most of the faculty members belonged to Grade 16 and had no teaching experience.
Children Hospital Managing Director Dr Ahsan Waheed Rathore agreed that the hospital did not have a proper building for the purpose but said that the college’s management was aiming at combining the facilities of school and college of nursing. He said that hospital management wanted to established college of nursing to meet the need of nurses in the hospital which was why they introduced senior staff nurses as faculty members to train their students.