Nursing Faculty Development in Pakistan; Teaching and Learning Competencies

Human health resource is the core component of any health system. Pakistan’s health system faces a critical shortage of qualified healthcare professionals such as physicians, dentists, nurses, pharmacists and allied healthcare workers1. Pakistan has one of the fastest growing populations and is ranked as the fifth largest population in the globe2. The health system of Pakistan is confronted with the challenge to cater to the unmet healthcare needs of this rapidly growing human population. The health system of Pakistan is facing multiple challenges and among these, one of the key challenges is the production of quality human resource for health. Pakistan has recently focused much on uplifting the standards of medical schools; to produce competent physicians, however, uplifting and streamlining nursing education still remains a big challenge.  Currently, there are approximately 90,000 nurses registered with Pakistan nursing council3. In 2018, the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination made a thorough assessment of the existing human health resource and as per the report published Pakistan needs 0.8 million nurses by the year 20304. There is also an imbalance in the current workforce with more physicians onboard as compared to nurses in the system. Pakistan is thus confronted to upscale the production of nurses to meet Universal Health Coverage goal by year 2030 as well as to maintain the minimum standards of nursing workforce development. To uplift the standards of nursing education, Pakistan has embarked on graduate nursing education as entry into practice qualification from the year 2018 and onwards. This has shifted nursing education pre-dominantly from associate diploma regulated by nursing examination boards to baccalaureate degree program run by the universities. Maintaining standards in the production of quality nursing workforce is a big challenge for Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination and Pakistan Nursing Council. Pakistan has though shifted onto a baccalaureate degree program in nursing its faculty is not fully prepared in modern day educational pedagogies, assessment methods, curriculum development and evaluation, educational psychology and educational leadership and management5. There is an acute need to train nursing faculty in basic teaching competencies for effectively teaching at BS nursing level. Such trainings shall be mandatory for everyone who aspires to teach in nursing colleges. The Pakistan nursing council shall make such trainings mandatory for all nursing faculty who is involved in teaching to nursing students.