NMCN 2017 KADUNA LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE: THE ODDS AND GLEES – BY UGONSA
Introduction:
The
hue and cry trailing the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria (NMCN)
leadership conference that was held in late March, 2017 in Kaduna was prescient.
If for nothing else, it showed that nurses, both the leaders and followers,
have generally agreed that all is not well with nursing in Nigeria and that we
cannot achieve any meaningful professional growth and development without
overhauling the structure of the profession in all its ramifications. It also
showed that nurses desire a change from the current critically disordered
structure of classless multiple qualifications to a well defined meaningful and
purposeful vertical professional growth up the ladder to Ph.D. It equally
showed that the hideous idea which some retrogressive elements valiantly
attempted to foist on us that some other professions – such as Health
Education, Psychology, Guidance and Counseling, Nutrition, etc., - were all
allied to nursing, have been rejected, killed and buried as no mention of or
defense in favour of the term “degrees allied to nursing” was observed in the
conference proceedings or any of its originating materials or documents. It is
very obvious that those championing such a stupid campaign have been shamed to
an extent that they are now afraid to mention it in public.
SCHOOL
OF NURSING GOES TO HND
The main take of the
conference was that schools of Nursing will be re-branded into colleges of
Nursing to award HND, RN, RM and RPHN. With this development, it means we are
set to re-integrate nursing education and training into the mainstream of
Nigerian Educational System and policy. Although, the re-integration is at HND
level – a level lower than our expectation of minimum of first degree in
nursing and midwifery as “stat” for all nurses and midwives, it remains better
in all ramifications than the current apprenticeship bedside training that has
no academic value. HND is never and can never be our destination but certainly
it is a good “appian way” to our destination.
DOES
THIS DEVELOPMENT REFLECT UGONSA’S POSITION?
Yes – to a good extent!
UGONSA’s position has remained making first degree in nursing the baseline for
nursing practice. For this, UGONSA has been advocating for upgrade or
affiliation of Schools of Nursing and Midwifery to degree awarding
institutions. UGONSA has also made a call to reduce the study period for
acquiring nursing degree by RN holders to 2 years, from the current 5 years in
Nigeria, as is the case in many academically developed countries, to ease the
process of upgrade and transition to B.N.Sc. It should be recalled that on 10th
November, 2014, UGONSA in a letter – Ref No. UGONSA/014/NUC/O1/SG, addressed to
Secretary General of the National University Commission (NUC) – described the five (5) years spent by nurses
and midwives with the basic qualifications (RN/RM) of the NMCN to get first
degree in nursing from Nigerian universities as outrageous and requested that
RN/RM, which have been recognized as a HND [for employment purposes] be equally
treated as HND in academics – to shorten
the course duration for transition from RN/RM to degree from 5 to 2 years. It
is instructive to add that UGONSA made such call on the premise that all the
post-basic programmes must be upgraded and transformed to post-graduate
programmes to be run as masters’ and Ph.D.
The current move by the council
therefore will add the lacking academic skin to RN, which has for long been
treated as HND in the civil service but as an equivalent of SSCE in the
academic arena. With this development the transitional period from RN to degree
would be shortened from 5 to 2 years.
ARE THERE OTHER BENEFITS TO THIS DEVELOPMENT?
Yes! The firm hegemonic
grip of outsiders especially Clergy and Chief Medical Directors, who are not
nurses, on the affairs of our educational institutions will be check-mated.
Those in missionary and Teaching Hospital owned schools of nursing and
midwifery understand better the level of disturbing meddlesomeness witnessed in
the hands of these chief executives. Going HND will create a form of autonomous
environment for the schools and check-mate the excesses of outsiders on the
activities our education and training institutions.
Besides this, it will
equally phase out the era of using poorly prepared tutors to teach in our
schools. In schools of nursing and midwifery, it is common to see those that
became tutors by the way of RNT programme. After acquiring RN qualification,
they zoomed off for the short-cut RNT programme and come back to teach our
students without adequate exposure. A lecturer should have advanced preparation
and exposure especially at Masters’ and Ph.D levels. Whether we like it or not,
the quality of persons handling our educational activities vis-à-vis their
academic qualifications contributes a great deal to our public image and
respectability. The era of “RN teaching RN” in the name of RNT will be over
with our going collegiate.
ARE
THERE THINGS THAT ARE YET TO BE PROPERLY PUT IN PLACE?
Yes! While we are not
filled with glee at the prospect of something amiss, the loud silence on what
becomes of the basic schools of midwifery and our post-basic specialty schools
compels otherwise. What seems like a blanket decision to maintain the status
quo for schools of midwifery and post-basic specialty schools while only
schools of nursing is being touted for upgrade to HND casts specks on the intention of the promoters of the
exercise. We agree that 5 years is too much time to be spent by RN holders in
pursuing a nursing degree but strongly disagree that a HND or degree holder has
to regress to the post-basic schools to get baseless unclassified
qualifications with no academic value in the specialty areas. We equally
disagree that schools of midwifery will maintain their current state while only
schools of nursing port to HND.
What is worth doing is
worth doing well. In whose interest are we retaining the post-basic specialty
schools? In whose interest are we abandoning the basic schools of midwifery to
remain the way they are? We must put things in their places. Accordingly,
post-basic schools should be concurrently upgraded to post-graduate to pave way
for a HND or B.N.Sc holder who wishes to specialize in any specialty area of
nursing – such as Peripoerative nursing, Anaesthesiology, Accident and
emergency, Paediatric nursing, Ophthalmic nursing, ENT nursing, Orthopaedic
nursing, Psychiatric and mental health nursing, etc, – to do so progressively
at masters’ and then Ph.D level. The intention to retain the specialties at
“qualification level” to make us continue to pursue multiple unclassifiable
“qualis” after HND or B.N.Sc is misguided and implies that we are not yet ready
for any genuine radical change but rather have accepted mediocrity as our
inalienable norm.
The monetary resources
expended to obtain a post-basic qualification is more than what is spent to get
a masters’ degree yet one million “post-basic qualis” can never equal a
bachelor’s degree let alone a masters’ degree. Whatever informed the decision
to maintain the staus quo for the post-basics can be for any other thing but
certainly not for the progressive interest of the nurses. Whatever be the case,
the message is very loud and clear – that nurses have said NO to “unclassified
qualifications devoid of academic value” be it at basic or post-basic level and
anything short of that is unacceptable.
We are too much of a
cynic to believe that nothing is amiss in the current adventure if the
post-basic specialties are not concurrently upgraded to post-graduate levels
such that after bagging the HND or B.N.Sc, nurses can progress vertically to
get their masters and then PhD rather than moving in a vicious cycle of waste
in the name of multiple unclassified post-basic qualifications as is obtainable
today.
MIDWIFERY
vs NURSING: ARE WE FAIR ENOUGH?
Our council is named
“Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria” because it regulates both nursing
and midwifery. But an unbiased evaluation of its activities and policies can
leave one to infer that it is more of a nursing than midwifery council. This is
because midwifery is yet to receive the type of attention that has been given
to nursing.
In our universities, we
run only bachelor of nursing science. We are yet to commence bachelor of
Midwifery. Now we are set to run HND in Nursing but remain mute on what becomes
of midwifery. Most midwives that ran the basic midwifery programme find it
difficult to secure admission into the B.N.Sc programme, yet we feel less
concerned about their plight. It is high time we created a Bachelor of
Midwifery (B.M) degree programme, as a single honours, or modify the existing
BNSc programme into dual honours – to be awarded as bachelor of nursing and
midwifery. Our sister profession, Medicine, awards its degree as a dual honours
in Nigeria to accommodate medicine and surgery. Thus, their first degree is
bachelor of medicine and surgery abbreviated as MBBS. We stand to gain more if
we run ours as Nursing and Midwifery to cover our much neglected midwifery in
our degree programmes by making our first degree a “double majors” of Nursing
and Midwifery – BNBM (Bachelor of Nursing, Bachelor of Midwifery). This will
give midwifery equal stake and ease off abridgement to degree of those that had
studied midwifery at basic level or HND as the case may be. For equity and
fairness, the current metamorphosis into HND should be equally extended to
Midwifery.
CONCLUSION
2. Nurses want the critical disorder in our
training and educational systems to be overhauled such that our qualifications
shall have academic value with a progressive vertical advancement up the ladder
to PhD level.
4. UGONSA abhors the 5-year duration
currently spent by Registered Nurses in pursuing first degree in nursing in
Nigerian universities especially as it takes holders of such qualification two
years or less to get same nursing degree from universities in developed
countries that are better ranked than Nigerian universities.
5. UGONSA equally abhors the hegemonic grip,
meddlesomeness and interference in our education and training by outsiders
especially Chief Medical Directors and Clergy, whose institutions own a great
number of the existing schools of Nursing and Midwifery, and supports any
effort or move to tame such.
6. UGONSA welcomes the current move for upgrade
from schools of nursing to colleges of nursing for the award of HND but advises
that such be extended to midwifery and that post-basics should not be left out
but concurrently upgraded to post-graduates as masters’ and Ph.D in nursing.
7. UGONSA envisages that in the forseeable
future, dons – in the likes of Doctors/Professors of Perioperative Nursing,
Anaesthetic Nursing, Paediatric Nursing, Orthopaedic Nursing, etc – will be
very visible in the clinical settings, only if we respect the burning nurses’ wish
and desire for a vertically structured
progressive system of education and training that shall count both in
professional and academic sense unlike the current critically disordered system
that awards multiple qualifications that are devoid of academic value.
8. UGONSA makes case for establishment of
departments of midwifery in our universities or on the alternative – modifying
the existing B.N.S c degree to a “double majors” to be awarded as Bachelors of
Nursing and Midwifery (BNBM).
9. UGONSA encourages schools of nursing to
go for direct affiliation with nearby universities as such is more beneficial
than transformation to HND awarding institutions. But where such is not
feasible, the HND structure should be embraced as it remains better than the
current bedside structure.
UGONSA…….Make
a positive change!
Citation
This piece should be cited as follows:
University
Graduates of Nursing Science Association [UGONSA]. (2017). NMCN 2017 Kaduna Leadership Conference:
The Odds and Glees. Position Paper/Diary.
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