PESHAWAR, July 24: Students of nursing schools have made an impassioned plea to the government to raise their monthly stipend, improve their daily food intake and allow them leave so they could perform their duties satisfactorily.

The student nurses also called on the general public to empathise with their condition and treat them with the respect they deserve.

“People are not willing to adopt nursing as a profession because of the problems associated with the job,” said a student nurse at the Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH).

Student nurses in the NWFP get a monthly stipend of Rs1, 275 — which is too paltry a sum to meet their requirements. This is a little less than half of what student nurses receive in Punjab.

A student nurse told Dawn that since a quarter of their stipend was deposited in the hostel mess, they were left only with Rs975 to meet their expenses.

According to a fourth-year student, a number of her colleagues had been affected by the Pakistan Nursing Council’s decision to raise the annual examination fee from Rs800 to Rs1, 800. Likewise, the fee for the third-year nursing examination had been raised from Rs100 to Rs1400, she said. Many students were forced to take a loan from relatives and friends to sit for the exams.

About 1,000 student nurses at the three teaching hospitals — Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) and Khyber Teaching Hospital — are finding it hard to get leave in order to appear in the intermediate and bachelor level examinations as private candidates.

“Our senior nurses do not allow us to take the examinations because they know work would suffer in the wards and operating theatres,” said a second-year student, claiming that student nurses played a bigger role in hospitals than they were credited with.

“Although we pay a hostel mess fee of Rs300, the food that we are served is very bad,” complained a student nurse at the Khyber Teaching Hospital. Since most students prefer to prepare food themselves, their mess money goes to waste, she said.

“When student nurses fall ill they are rarely allowed to take the day off to recuperate even when they are advised rest by doctors,” said a fourth-year student. Yet there were some “blue-eyed students” of either “the housekeeper or chief nursing superintendent who were allowed leave,” she said.

“In the last three months two student nurses have died due to the indifference of senior nurses. Both students were not allowed medical leave despite being seriously ill,” said a nurse. She said that a majority of nurses belonged to poor families and their parents sent them to nursing schools instead of enrolling them in colleges.

Student nurses also complained about lack of qualified teachers at schools and said that senior nurses were often deputed to teach them. They cited the example of Khyber Teaching Hospital where there were only three tutors for over 400 students.

Student nurses are also fed up with the attitude of government officials and the general public towards them.

“Most people consider nurses to be little more than sex workers,” said a student nurse. “We record the temperature and blood pressure of patients, change their bedding and clothing but there is no reward for us at all,” a third-year student said.