I chanced upon this news today and it sat me back a little. The key points that caught my eyes were:
The nation’s nurses and midwives are categorically opposed to any attempts to move undergraduate education away from the university sector.The ANF called on the federal government to reverse the decision which will lead to an erosion of the professional status and working conditions of nurses and midwives.
And:
Nursing is a complex and demanding profession that requires the same rigorous scholarly preparation, based on research and evidence, as other recognised health professions. Offering nursing in the TAFE system will only segment and isolate nurses from other health professionals, remove nursing from the knowledge building and research base that universities offer, ultimately diminishing standards in nursing and in health care.
To put it succinctly, the Australian Nursing Federation is up in arms because the Deputy Prime Minister, who is also the Minister of Education, Julia Gillard, has approved federal funding for Holmesglen TAFE (much like Polytechnics in Singapore, with a dash of ITE) for it’s provision of Bachelor of Nursing degree. This is because they strongly believe that nursing has no place in TAFE, and should remain a course strictly provided by Universities.
I know and I understand the concern that the current nursing courses throughout the country should receive more fundings. Everywhere in the world there is a screaming shortage of nurses, and people and instituitions who could do with more fundings so as to provide adequate, quality and efficient nursing education.
What drew my concern is how “elitist” the nursing federation point of view is. Holmesglen, the education provider in question, has got health sciences listed as some of the courses they provide. Furthermore, with pathology and biomedical technology listed as the other courses that they provide, I believe the school would have enough experience and labs within the campus grounds itself to provide at least SOME basic forms of academic research to get started.
Also, academic research and scholarly preparation itself isn’t ONLY due to the type of school a person entered into. As most university professors will tell you, the world is your fishing pond. How you wish to learn, how you intend yourself to learn as a student is FINDING your fishing pond. Every university has their limitations, and as would any school. The TAFE could be very well equipped with books, labs and tests, and even well hooked up with the local clinics for the nursing students’ clinicals.
However, if a student is too lazy and expects to be spoon-fed with information, all the quality of research and scholarly preparation is only but a dangling carrot waving at an uninterested donkey. Lecturers are only there as a guide, not to prod and push people in the right direction. I mean, we would expect people walking into a degree to be at least adult enough to know to do their own research too, right?
and really, let’s face it, jobs like nursing and medicine are careers that requires a lot of on the job practise more than anything else. You can practise on dummies, cadavers and even your partners (for cpr and the basic first aid skills I guess), but when the situation is crazy, busy and, most of all, in your face, you can’t carry your damn textbook around with you. no patient is going to come rolling into your damn lecture hall.
the most you would have is you, yourself, and the practicals you’ve had and you set to work.
In Singapore, Registered Nurses highest form of education is a diploma. The E.Ns get a certification. Both work similar jobs, just that E.Ns get lesser responsibilities. Because of the fact that neither eventuates into a degree within Singapore, the mentality of many people I know (such as my parents and the elders within the family) is that it is a shitty job that requires little intelligence, and you really do all the shit. Just half-way between the patient and the doctor.
of course, it doesn’t help that the only nurse within the family regales us with tales that revolves around and around the bed-pan and wiping the asses of incontinent patients.
But you know, Karma can be a bitch if the person chooses to be. Singaporean nurses are respected worldwide for the work they do. Despite the fact that many countries do offer it as a degree, the DIPLOMA registered nurses in Singapore are loved and respected. They are not the half-way between a patient and a doctor, they are NURSES.
what I am trying to say with the above is this:
TAFE is not a bad instituition. They are not the red-headed step child of the tertiary educational sector. They can provide quality education, if we would just trust them to do it. Labelling them as possibly being UNDER a university quality-wise is quite wrong. There are many people who, after ditching university, found their feet in TAFEs and then move on upwards.
Whatever certification a person get has to be on the strengths of their own contribution to their education. Be it Diplomas or a Degree, the school involved is not at fault if a student chooses to not do their own research into their field of interest.
However, professional status and working conditions are based on VERY human perceptives, if people choose to be degrading or elitists, it is the society and the workplace that we have to change. Not the education system or the type of certification a person gets.
bitchy