Crisis in Nursing: Proliferation of Ghost Institutions

By: Shabir Hussain Jhatial

By revisiting the Pakistan Nursing Council's decision of already disapproved low-quality profit-oriented nursing institutions through an informal forum, the officials of the Council may put into risk the egalitarian work already done by the Council in its 8-10 January 2020 session and, also risking the health and life of patients in the hands of those 'would be' graduates nurses who will get their degrees/diplomas without basic skills to handle the human lives in critical situations.

Such unskilled nursing graduates may prove like licensed killers and such institutions are like high-risk sleeping cells of disease and despair for patients and families they would care of. Allowing such institutions while compromising with the legalities, bye-laws and provisions of the PNC ACT- XXVI-1973, the people's basic right of receiving safe nursing care will stand violated by the body that is assumed to safeguard the same.

This deliberate trespass against professional ethics allegedly for unexplained gains seems in vogue, in connivance with some provincial nursing boards, for a decade. This encroaching networking has now started engulfing the sanctities of universities after the commencement of Bachelor's Degree Program in Nursing and affiliation therein.

Now,  owners of this mafia-like network have become such strong that they dare to dictate their terms to PNC after getting selected at its highest position who themself is the owner of many schools across the country. How this mafia has become such strong and influential, the simple data about fake institutions' business reveals that this business has become more profiteering than narcotic smuggling and sale.

The recent immoral propaganda campaign—five days-long meetings and campaign in Islamabad and Karachi—press releases and threats of court cases—and threats of street protests against those who maintain balanced professional approach and oppose proliferation is a simple example of this influential menace is spreading like epidemic throughout Pakistan and is hell-bent to destroy the basic fabric of greatest caring and sensitive profession of the world.

Most of the fake/ghost/profiteering nursing institutions work like franchise outlets where people can reserve, book, and buy the diplomas/degrees/courses while sitting at their homes and in some cases even abroad.

Hundreds of ghost students in such institutions without recognition and even registration are let to appear in exams and in some cases other persons manage to appear and pass exams. Later on, those who used to appear without pre-registration by PNC are/were given enrollments/pre-registration on the pretext of largely misused term, "on the humanitarian grounds" which, basically is a technical matter having repercussions on the lives of patients, families and communities whom such licensed killers provide care.

This time again PNC officials manoeuvred the precedents and provisions and let the five ghost institutions' 285 students pre-registration and to appear in the examination with the active connivance of Nursing Board in Sindh. The conspiracy got stalled for time being in Board meeting chaired by Secretary Health Sindh.

The PNC after infiltration of Mafia-Networking has become a tool for manoeuvring illegal into legal destroying the sanctity and good old traditions of the Council. The infiltrators of ghost-mafia, for past 10-15 years, encouraged this perilous trend that has been a threat to the life of people for a long time to come—through licenced killer nurses produced in those sleeping cells.

Those managing the Health Department Govt. of Sindh, the PNC, and the Directorates of Nursing across Pakistan have moral, legal, and national obligation to ensure the quality of nursing institutions by not letting to operate such institutions in their respective provinces. And there must be strong representatives from provinces to keep a check on letters of PNC which need verification and validly whether they are issued according to decisions passed in the council or otherwise. Dozens of fake and unlawful letters were unearthed in the Council recently.

The Pakistan Nursing Council is our national asset and it must be governed according to its statuary mandate in the best public interests. The undue and artificial pressure created must be tackled according to bye-laws,  provisions, rules, and precedent decisions of the Council. And the Government's policy of quality and transparency as an egalitarian society must be maintained for the sake of our generations and for the sake of the dignity of our Nursing Profession. The resistance against such unethical entities must be maintained as their greed and shameless desire to continue, rather, to increase this menace, will never stop itself. This is requested in the larger interest of our noble profession's image which is under threat from "Fake Nursing Institutions Groups" who have become a powerful mafia and have captured or infiltrated our institutions for their personal interests.

( The writer is Ex-Director Nursing, Government of Sindh & Nursing Graduate from The Aga Khan University School of Nursing & Midwifery.)