KOLKATA: Shortage of healthcare workers, especially trained nurses, has been felt the most during the pandemic. To tide over the crisis, the government last year had decided to increase the number of seats in its nursing training schools.
The health department will now enhance teaching manpower in 27 such schools through 87 posts in various teaching capacity.
“To overcome shortage of nursing personnel and also upgrade status of nursing education, the state had earlier decided to set up 27 more schools to train GNM (general nursing and midwifery) courses. Now the process of recruitment in these nursing schools will begin,” said a source at Swasthya Bhawan.
The 87 posts sanctioned include that of principal nursing officer, senior tutors and tutors. The GNM course takes three years and the state was churning out about 2,400 such nurses each year. Now the government will raise number of seats by about 400 each year.
Private nursing colleges too add a pool of about 2,000 nurses each year. “Ideally there should be one nurse for every three patients in the general ward. . DDue to pandemic, authorities are finally realising the nursing personnel crisis,” said retired government nurse Parbati Pal of Nurses’ Unity.
