PESHAWAR, April 8: Students of the Nursing School, Khyber Teaching Hospital, have demanded better education facilities, including qualified teaching staff.

According to a survey conducted by Dawn, most of the student nurses, who appeared in the first year examination (Sept Batch), could not pass owing to the poor education facilities. 

“Only seven out of a total of 80 students passed in the first year examination, because there was no prescribed syllabus. Old course was taught whereas the question paper was set from the new course”, a student nurse told Dawn.

The students of the school, on the condition of anonymity, told Dawn that there was a shortage of qualified and trained teachers. The students had hired an English teacher on self-help basis and each student paid Rs50 per month for this facility and only one teacher took a class with strength of 73, the students complained. “The teachers do not deliver lecture in English so the students fail in written examination,” a student nurse said.

“The teachers provide outdated photo-copies of notes which are replete with spelling mistakes. Reference books are also not available in the library which remains locked most of the time”, a student nurse observed.

The students complained about the harsh and discouraging attitude of the senior staff. The failures of the September batch were sent back to their homes for six months as a penalty, they said.

Despite the clear rules of the Pakistan Nurses Council (PNC), which said that a student nurse could not be assigned night-duty in the hospital ward and she was supposed to do the bedding and taking only temperature of  the patients during her day-duty, the nurse students told Dawn that they had been assigned night-duty after only two months.