Soon, 27 more General Nursing and Midwifery schools in state
Kolkata: In a bid to address the crisis of nurses in state-run hospitals and healthcentres across the state, the Bengal government has decided to set up 27 more General Nursing and Midwifery (GNM) schools.
According to the sources in the Health department, there are 89 such schools in the state so far. The state government will also create around 890 posts to ensure proper functioning of the 27 new schools. One of the main objectives of the initiative is to further boost the health infrastructure, particularly in the rural areas.
The candidates who have obtained their Higher Secondary degree will be able to pursue the course on the basis of their percentage of marks in the examination. It would be a three years' diploma course offered by the Health department. The whole process will be conducted by the West Bengal Nursing Council. It also runs a course on the Auxiliary Nursing Midwifery (Revised) which is a two years' course.
For the development of nursing education, the Bengal government has already allotted around Rs 57 crore for the 2017-18 financial year. During the same period, around 52 students have been admitted to MSc Nursing, 444 to BSc Nursing and 2,175 to the GNM course. In an addition to the existing number of seats in the GNM course, the state Health department is poised to create nearly 900 more seats.
"This is a significant move by the state government to increase the strength of nursing staff members in the hospitals. The number of seats has also been increased by a large number," a senior official of the Health department said.
It may also be mentioned here that five new GNM courses were started at Jhargram and Basirhat District Hospitals, Ghatal and Jangipur Sub-Divisional Hospitals and College of Medicine and Sagore Dutta Hospital from September 2017 with 60 seats in each hospital. With the new initiative, the total number of GNM seats has also been raised to 3,065 from 2,175.
Meanwhile, the state government had already started imparting special training among the nursing aspirants in the state and as many as 10,000 nurses would be recruited as community health officers in the district and sub-divisional hospitals and also in district healthcentres where there is still a crunch of doctors. The recruitment would be done through various phases on a priority basis. These nurses will be able to address the crisis in the hospitals in the villages through training.
