Page 33 - Nursing Education in Malaysia

3/ tHE status of NursiNg iN Malaysia

would pose a real challenge to nursing. Another reason could be that there is no clinical
ladder for promotion. Currently, career advancement is available only in management or
teaching.

realities about Nursing in Malaysia

The scope of nursing practice, as described earlier must ideally be met in order to
provide quality care. However, a number of realities need to be accepted as being relevant
to Malaysia which could provide both challenges and opportunities for change. They are:

1. Almost all staff nurses working in hospitals and the community are diploma holders.

2. The trend in Malaysia is toward a population of newly graduated degree nurses
occupying promotional positions without practicing nursing.

3. Changes that are taking place in nursing practice do so because they are inevitable i.e,
they have to change because the time has come for nurses to change. Nursing hardly
plans for such change.

4. Standards for Nursing Practice, although not available on the Internet (as are Nursing’s
vision, mission and goals), have been written but highly probable that they are not
being enforced.

5. Quality Improvement Initiatives ie activities carried out by nursing organizations to
evaluate and improve the quality of client care services provided to all clients might
have been done only through ISO initiatives.

6. Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for nursing has not been finalized by the Ministry
of Health.

7. Evidence-based Practice (EBP) in Malaysia is not on nursing’s agenda.

almost all staff nurses working in hospitals and the community
are diploma holders
The standard of education between colleges that prepare diploma graduates varies
based on entry requirements, curriculum content, delivery and evaluation system. It is
every new diploma graduate’s wish that what they have learned can be used during their
working life. The extent to which this can be realized is highly dependent upon quality
of candidates taken into nursing, and the quality of teachers who can adopt teaching
approaches which must go beyond that of merely learning of facts to that of application,
analysis, synthesis and evaluation. It is generally accepted that diploma nurses are task
oriented, obedient and passive, the result of, may be, low entry requirement and teacher
centred, didactic approach in education.