Graduate Nurses Protest Exclusion From Internship

The University Graduates of Nursing Science Association on Wednesday petitioned President Muhammadu Buhari over their exclusion from internship by the Federal Ministry of Health.
The association made the call during the Professionals National Conference in Abakaliki.
The National President of the association, Chief Solomon Egwuenu, said at its national professional conference in Abakaliki that the exclusion had an adverse consequence on client-care.
Egwuenu, who was represented by the association’s National Secretary, Mr Goodluck Nshi, said the exclusion robbed nurses of the opportunity of acquiring comprehensive clinical skills needed for optimum performance.
He also condemned the under placement of graduate nurses on CONHESS 07 after their NYSC while their counterparts in other healthcare disciplines were placed on at least CONHESS 09.
Egwuenu explained that the internship was meant to blend the more theoretically skewed university education with comprehensive clinical expertise for enhanced performance and qualitative client care.
He argued that the exclusion defied logic for nurses to be the only core healthcare professionals left out of the scheme.
“Nurses need the internship training more than any other member of the health team since they stay longer and closer to the patients and care for them as well as monitor them round-the-clock,” he said.
He also lamented the withdrawal of teaching allowance payable to healthcare professionals in teaching hospitals, since they were already under-placed and shortchanged.
Egwuenu said that the treatment meted out to nurses contributed to the excessive medical tourism by Nigerians and the lack of industrial harmony in the health sector.
He called on nurses to always put their patients foremost and above any other thing in the face of deliberate and unwarranted provocations.
“You should also maintain decorum, professionalism and altruistic patriotism for which you are known,” he said.
In his speech, a member of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in Ebonyi, Mr Chinedu Ogah, promised to convey their request to the president.