CHENNAI:The Trained Nurses Association of India — an association of nurses from across the country, will be submitting a proposal to the Health and Family Welfare Department this week, to construct a University for Nurses. The Association along with S Ani Grace Kalaimathi, Registrar of the Tamil Nadu Nursing and Midwives Council is already in talks with the department. “We have been in talks with several other departments as well, but now we have done complete background work and prepared a final project that we wish to submit to the Minister in person, so that we can come to a favourable decision,” says Jaeny Kemp, president of TNAI, on the sidelines of the International Nurses Day Celebration at St Isabel hospital in Mylapore.
Over two lakh nurses have registered with the Tamil Nadu Nursing and Midwives Council since 1926, when it was established. Tamil Nadu also has 224 schools of nursing that offer diploma courses and 169 nursing colleges out of which 69 institutions offer M Sc programmes in nursing. Grace says that while colleges are available, several institutes offering unauthorised courses are on the rise, “Bogus nursing institutes are mushrooming in and around the city, they offer unauthorised courses like physician technicians and several names we haven’t even heard about making the number of unlicensed nurses quite long. This in turn risks the patients life,” she adds.
She adds that a Nursing University would help get rid of all these problems. “We have designed a course where we will be following the uniform standard of syllabus. We will also be looking at ways to improve it, so that, aspirants will be able to gain better quality education, better employment and would not feel left out in the medical world. This University will also have a nurse holding posts like the Vice Chancellor, Dean and others,” she explains. This will make it a first-of-a-kind in India and second in the world after Sweden.
Grace says that quality education is the need of the hour, “Nurses are the heart of the healing industry, they cannot do without us. All we need is proper recognition for our work and service. I hope this University, once established, will change it all.”