Varsity Don Decries Poor Remuneration Of Nurses

By Juliet Oyoyo

Kaduna

Dr Saleh Garba, a lecturer at the Department of Nursing, Faculty of Medicine, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Northwest, Nigeria, has stated that poor remuneration was a major challenge faced by nursing practice in Nigeria.

He stated this at the Fourth Annual General Meeting and Scientific Conference of the Association of General Private Nursing Practitioners in Kaduna, recently.

He said that others include attempts to move the training of nurses away from hospital-based schools to the university, lack of facilities, interference from members of other health professions and inadequate manpower for university-based programmes.

The lecturer said that the Nigerian nurses were now realizing that no matter how intelligent they are and no matter how innovative their training programmes are, their training must be in line with the national and global educational programme that matches professional qualifications with academics.

Garba stressed that globally,

education potentials were increasing and were being harnessed from country to country, hence the need for professional qualifications matched with academic qualifications to place the nurses at par with their colleagues in the healthcare industries.

He added that such would widen the scope of nursing and the critical thinking capacity of the nurse by improving the quality of care, improve the status and image of the profession and the nurses and, grant them greater independence and control of their profession.

Contributing, the National President of Association of General Private Nursing Practitioners, Dr Joseph Olawale, lamented that Government at all levels were not serious to tackle the menace of quacks.

He blamed the government and the public for providing a conducive atmosphere for the quacks to operate, saying, “This is because the law allows anybody with financial capacity to open a clinic.”

The national president of the AGPNP called on the government to ensure that only certified personnel from the Nursing Council were allowed to engage in such practice.

In his remark, Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, who was represented by the Commissioner of Health, Professor Andrew Nok, represented by Mrs. Salamatu Wachin, a director in the Ministry, vowed to seal any substandard private health clinic or chemist in the state.

According to him, the state government has put in place committees going round private health clinics to check substandard ones.

He therefore urged the nursing practitioners not to indulge in corrupt practices.