The Proposed HND Nursing; A Scornful Jocularity of Nursing Profession by Oloye Abiola O.

This is a personal opinion and also an oracular reaction to news making the air and circulating the electronic media, purportedly to have emanated from the on going NMCN Leadership Conference at Kaduna, proposing to commence the ever retrogressive model termed HND nursing in various schools of Nursing and Midwifery in Nigeria. This is a time bomb, when it explodes, the innocent and gullible teenagers who are seeking every channel to become registered nurses will be the victims of this merry go round academic qualification, while those leaders who made such policy, disguised themselves under the platform of NMCN, will become merry-makers after nicking money from them.

According to the act that established Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria(NMCN). The Council is tasked to ensure high quality of Nursing and Midwifery education in Nigeria to meet the national health needs of the nation at that time. It is obvious and pathetic that Nursing Council is doing otherwise, proposing HND programme that will further ridicule Nursing education, making the profession an ass of jokes and laughing stock in the comity of health professionals in Nigeria.

We will never be moved by such ghoulish and mephistophelean recommendation because the irresponsible cohort and camarilla that is bent on burrying professionalism in nursing, is the brain behind the conference. Amidst the CORE health professions in the Health sector, only Nursing will parade her graduates with HND qualification. At this point where other sister heath professions such as physiotherapy and pharmacy are yawning for Doctor of Physiotherapy degree(DPT)  and Doctor of Pharmacy (pharmD). Nursing Council is yawning for HND, what a shame! Is it not laughable that after the HND nurses are enrolled on National Youth Service Scheme, we will be having two type of nurses on the NYSC camps, the HND nurses and BNSC nurses, which will further cause unresolved dichotomy and internecine rift among nurses, disrupting the already existing peace and unity among nurses.

ND/HND is meant to be run at technical schools (polytechnics and monotechnics) fully cognisant that they deal more with technical education, and not for core clinical and professional courses like Nursing, Medicine, Pharmacy, Physiotherapy, e.t.c How on earth will Nursing Council be proposing that, nursing education should be joint regulated with National Board of Technical Education (NBTE). Is Nursing a technical education or medical education?

No wonder, the Nigerian media recently erroneously labelled nurses as medical technicians. Such proposal is laughable and is never a route to achieve professionalism but  a ploy to halt the miniature development  that has been witnessed in the nursing profession so far. Many of us may want to assume at this point, that our dear Nursing Council is confused and need close monitoring, peradventure their proposal failed, they make seek to collaborate with the National Commission for Colleges of Education(NCCE) to produce NCE nurses just to award academic certificates not considering the consequences on the already battered nursing image and poor public perception of nurses. Recently a nearby country, Ghana, moved all her post basic courses to university, but we have chosen a path to moving ours to monotechnics and award higher national diploma. I think Nursing Council should learn from Ghana.

Those people who are against the total cancellation of schools of nursing and eradication of hospital based nursing education on the premise that the required nursing personnel will be lacking are daydreaming and still wallowing in 18th century nursing era. In this 21st century too much nurses have been produced resulting in massive unemployment among nursing graduates. Today we see qualified, registered and certified nurses roaming about the street looking for job but no work to do, many of them have diverted to other sectors for means of livelihood, causing brain-drain and theft in nursing. I would like NMCN to ruminate and answer these following questions;

-Why do we like to make policies that will further place nurses below the bottom of food chain in the health sector?

-Why is it difficult for nursing council to unified nursing education, to producing graduate nurses with bachelor degree and higher degrees in nursing sciences?

-Why is it difficult for nursing council to do away with hospital based nursing education and establish a lower tiers of nursing personnel such as Certified Nurse Assistant ( CNA) and Licensed Practical Nurse(LNA) as done in other climes?

-Why will nursing council continue to make pollicies that will create more anchor and rivaries among nursing personnel in Nigeria (HND-BNSc saga) ?

Medical courses in Nigeria hatch their graduates at the University domain and the case of nursing should not be an exemption, if we want to be at par with other health professionals.

The nursing council as a matter of urgency should jettison HND MODEL and liase with NUC and Ministry of Health to modify and upgrade the curriculum of schools of nursing and midwifery for easy transition and to fit into the bachelor of nursing sciences curriculum in the universities. The era of Ross and Wilson of anatomy and physiology in our schools of nursing is over and should be faced out, they should introduce core pre-clinical courses with adequate unit courses in anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, Microbiology and parasitology e.t.c as it is being offered in pre clinical stage for nursing students at the university. This will allow smooth transition for RN graduates to be admitted into 400L(2years  RN to BNSC) and RN/post basic will spend one year to obtain bachelor degree in nursing science.

This is what NMCN, should work on and achieve, and not introducing HND programme to colleges of nursing and midwifery, as our colleges’ curriculum( RN/RM) is higher than HND programme and should never be equated to HND for any reason.

The proposal we are expecting from NMCN conference is Nurse consultancy model and not HND nursing model. #saynotohndnursing

A WORD IS ENOUGH FOR THE WISE.

OLOYE Abiola Oluwafemi-  RN, RPHN, BNSc(Ife), CGH (USA)

abolyife@gmail.com

This is just the writer’s opinion