BANGALORE: “The healthcare sector is facing a 40 to 50 per cent shortage of nursing personnel in the country. There is a need to set goals and create a roadmap in the next five years. Under ideal conditions, the healthcare sector requires one nurse for every patient for critical illness and five nurses for every patient in psychiatric cases,” said Registrar of NIMHANS Dr V Ravi.
He was speaking at an international conference on ‘Nursing education and training in a global context’ organised by Dayananda Sagar Institutions in collaboration with California State University, San Bernardino and Sagar Hospitals on Wednesday.
In his inaugural address, Dr Ravi said that there is a great demand for nurses, nursing and other allied services in the healthcare sector. The need of the hour is to encourage tele-nursing services and auxiliary services, besides opening more number of nursing schools to boost the availability of the number of nurses.
Associate professor and International Co-ordinator of Nursing, California State University, San Bernardino, Dr Marilyn Stonar said that there is a global demand for nurses because the world population is ageing.
“The demand for experienced nurses is always going up with people are fighting chronic diseases like AIDS and cancer despite the advancement of science and enhanced longevity of human life, she said.
Nurses and patients in the US are growing old together and of the 250,000 nurses who serve in the country one third of them are on the verge of retirement, she noted.
Dr Stonar further maintained that US government has stipulated on average two nurses for every patient in the intensive care units, about four to five nurses for every patient during daytime and six nurses for every patient during night.
Prof Pia Hagquist, a nursing faculty member at the Central Ostrobothnia University of Applied Sciences, Finland, laid emphasis on problem-based learning which has also been recommended by the WHO. “Promoting heath is more important than curing a disease,” she said.