“A voice to lead on investing in nursing and respecting the rise of global health security, focusing on the need to protest, support and invest in the nursing profession to strengthen the global health care system.
And today, in particular, we’re talking about nursing and its role in pandemics. They were especially overworked and exposed during the pandemic, and we appreciate their humanity during that time. Nursing is the backbone of all healthcare systems around the world, and without nursing, there would be no healthcare, demonstrating how vital this subject is to us”, said Dr Nida Hussain, Pro-chancellor, Ziauddin University.
She was addressing the seminar, titled “NURSES: A Voice to Lead – Invest in Nursing and Respect Rights to Secure Global Health” to mark International Nurses Day, organized by Ziauddin University Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery. The purpose of the seminar was to inform the public about the work of nurses and how they contribute to the health and wellbeing of the public.
“At Ziauddin, we understood the need of promoting nurses’ work and rights to a safe workplace, as well as their full participation and decision-making in patient care and our administrative function. We’ve worked very hard in the last two decades to improve the quality of our nursing”, Dr. Hussain added.
Representing the government of Sindh, Director General Nursing Shabir Hussain Jhatial said that since the country’s founding, Sindh province has had almost 1100 BSN admissions and nearly 600 midwifery admissions. The Covid was at its peak when the Sindh government interpolated 2000 nurses, despite the country’s financial problems. The nurses were given hundreds of job opportunities.
The federal government has allocated 8.1 billion rupees for the improvement of nursing and midwifery services. As far as the Sindh government is concerned, nurses and midwifery are being developed and improved, and nurses are being invested in for the good of our country.
While giving the knowledge about the current nursing reports Dr Rozina Karmaliani, Dean, School of Nursing and Midwifery (AKU) said “by 2030, the WHO expects that the globe will require an additional 9 million nurses and midwives. Take a look at the situation in Pakistan; it was already in short supply before the conflict, and we urgently need to develop a large number of high-quality nurses and midwives in Pakistan.
The common misperception is that midwives are solely needed for maternity and newborn care (only 55% of care is required for MNCH, 37% for SRHR, and 8% for adolescent SRHR).” “The ideal nurse to doctor ratio is 4.1. in Pakistan the ratio is 2 Doctors per nurse-midwife and LHV combined. Our migration of quality nurses is on the rise. Over 1000 nurses emigrated for better jobs in 2020-2021.” She added. During the 12th Interactive series of ZU Dialogues, explaining how World Health Organization (WHO) further help Pakistan to achieve the essence, Dr Sarah Salman, Head of Office Sindh Representative WHO stated.
“In terms of Sindh, we are assisting the health department, nursing department, and another education department in developing the ability of our health personnel. WHO is a health organization that provides a leading health system with several guidelines, and execution varies by country, thus there are differences. During the Covid epidemic, we received a great deal of assistance from the nursing community”.
Stating the role of NGOs in securing the rights of midwives, Dr. Amy Winslow, a Certified Nurse Midwife from USA said “nurses and midwives are the backbones of the healthcare system; what I see as critical at this time is developing an effective education system to ensure that well-trained nurses and midwives are available to meet future needs; there is a shortage of nurses and midwives in every city and province, not just in Pakistan but also globally; we are watching candidates for MBBS admissions who are very keen to take admission and be a part of the nursing profession; we want students to learn about the profession”.
