The Bachelor of Science Nurses appear to be new introduction into the scheme of things in the nursing profession, notwithstanding the history of its genesis. In fact, the registered nurses who trained wholy in the Teaching Hospitals, feel deficient when placed adjacent to those BSc nurses, who are trained in the Universities.
Those registered nurses and midwives, who are already working in the Teaching Hospitals go ahead to register and study BSc nursing in the University to curtail this sense of insufficiency. They do this to forestall the overbearing attitude of the BSc nurses who, some of the time, get employed in the teaching and other hospitals eventually; and to also improve their take-home, which is indisputably less handsome than the take-home of their contemporary BSc nurses.
The BSc nurses even aspire to commence, if they have not even got, internship program in the Teaching Hospitals. This is an advantage the hospital trained nurses do not enjoy.
The illegality of an internship program for the BSc nurses, as well as the illegality of internship program for the medical laboratory scientists in the Teaching Hospitals, shall not be fully addressed in this article.
Nonetheless, the legal basis for internship for any other profession than for medical practitioners (viz Housemanship) in the Teaching Hospitals in Nigeria, is non-existant. Although this practice has been on for a while, the only explanation for the practice is the herd mentality, jungle introduction, encroachment and powerful usurpation, which are embellished with some foreign kind of flavor and tilt, if any.
We must always draw a line between what a Teaching Hospital generally can be used for, and what a Nigerian Teaching Hospital can do. The purpose of the Nigerian Teaching Hospital is for the training of medical students. This is different from what a Teaching Hospital in other countries can be used for. Nigerian Teaching Hospitals are rudimentary and evolving.
A country that allocates 15% of its annual budget for health will not likely run Teaching Hospitals the same way as another country that allocates a meagre 3% of its national budget for health. These are all in addition to the outdated, but still very valid, laws regulating. They are so outdated because the countries from where the laws were transplanted, have long departed from and abandoned the the outdated laws. They are very valid because those are what the courts would construct when the chips are down.
Medical students study in the Teaching Hospitals because the Acts regulating the Teaching Hospitals provided that they be so trained. The hospital-trained nurses are trained in the Teaching Hospitals, for the provision of adequate nursing staff strength, because the Acts regulating the Teaching Hospitals provided for that too. Housemanship for house officers is undertaken in the Teaching Hospitals because the Acts regulating the Teaching Hospitals provided for both undergraduate and postgraduate training of medical students in the Teaching Hospitals. Then, the internship program for nurses and scientists have defied all statutory explanations. Yet, they carry on as if nothing is wrong with that.
The herd mentality where laws are relegated and abandoned, on the altar of who is overambitious enough to pull the strings, and who is too busy with work to notice, has led to the creation of monsterous scheme of disjointed events that are now attempting to swallow the whole Nigerian health system and render it extinct.
Section 7(1)(b) of the Teaching Hospital Management Board Act is clear on how nurses needed for the Teaching Hospitals can be generated. The management Board is mandated:
(b) to construct, equip, maintain and operate such training schools and similar institutions as the Board considers necessary for providing the hospital at all times with a proper staff of hospital technicians and nurses;
Those Acts do not provide for the establishment of an Associate University for the nurses, as they did for medical students. The current situation where Universities send nursing students and laboratory scientists students to Teaching Hospitals for their training postings and hospital experience, is not only irregular in law and practice, but is also not backed by any Law whatsoever. The acceptance of the Teaching Hospitals to train such students is also patently ultra vires their statutory duties, and thus therefore illegal.
BSc nursing is purely an University academic undergraduate program, not created for hospital training, and should be treated as such. The nursing profession in Nigeria seeks to attain the zenith possible for any other profession. This zenith can be legally and legitimately attained by a progression from the registered nurses cadre, and not by a direct University enrollment, bypassing the total initial hospital certification, until such a time the relevant Acts and Laws are enacted to accommodate the direct University enrollment.
However, at this moment, a subsequent nursing training in the Universities after the initial Teaching Hospital statutory training of the nurses, will be a path, not calculated for the satisfaction of the statutory requirement for attaining the requisite standard of hospital work and duties, but for the sole purpose of climbing to the academic zenith of the nursing profession.
The process of training BSc nurses in the Universities and sending them to Teaching Hospitals for hospital experience is anachronistic to the intendment of the relevant Acts regulating the type of nurses needed in the Teaching Hospitals. The cadre of nurses provided for in the Teaching Hospitals are completely hospital trained. Thus, any attempt to place any other cadre of nurses above them, within the Teaching Hospitals setting is enigmatic and beside the law.
©Awkadigwe Fredrick Ikenna (MBBS, LLB, MWACS, DSC)
awkadigweikenna@yahoo.com
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© Copyright 2017 Ikenna Fredrick Awkadigwe. All rights reserved. No part of this publication is permitted to be used in any way, copied, photocopied printed, reproduced, transferred, adapted, argued in any fora, used in Court or recreated in any form or resemblance whatsoever, without the written approval and license of the author, Ikenna Fredrick Awkadigwe.
Good morning the learned NOBLE MAN, permit me to appreciate your write ups even when some of issues you raised maybe subject to further judicial interpretations.
ReplyDeleteOn the above topic, I wish you take a look again at the act establishing board of our teaching hospitals under the functions of the board, number 4 ie 7(4).
Subject to this Act, the Board shall have power to do anything which, in its opinion, is
calculated to facilitate the carrying out of its functions under this Act.
Kindly marry this to the other functions of the board esp 7(1)(a)
to equip, maintain and operate the hospital so as to provide facilities for diagnosis, curative, promotion and rehabilitative service in medical treatment
Dalu and remain blessed
Oga Klik, the two provisions you cited are both valid and reconcilable. The Board can do anything; but whatever they want to do must be for the effectuation of the functions granted it by the law, and not anything outside that function.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, in the provision you cited, Board can operate the Hospital so as to provide facilities for diagnosis, curative, promotion and rehabilitative service in medical treatment. This means that they can do anything possible to achieve that,and that alone.
They, therefore cannot start training BSc nurses, because BSc nursing training has nothing to do with medical treatment. Medical treatment simply means treatment by medical practitioners.
Therefore, diagnosis, curative, promotion and rehabilitative service,as used above, are to be provided by doctors; not by nurses, as nurses do not provide medical treatment to patients.
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ReplyDelete