Page 35 - Nursing Education in Malaysia

3/ tHE status of NursiNg iN Malaysia

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
Consumers of healthcare are more informed than ever before and with the Internet,
consumers have access to more health care and treatment information. Nursing is pivotal
in the provision of relevant information, not only because they are the frontline healthcare
providers, but also because nurses constitute the largest number of healthcare professionals.
Yet, health information and health teaching or counseling on, for example, drug therapy,
nutritional needs, exercise regime or even about disease process are not given to patients
and families.

Nursing roles continue to expand broadening the focus of nursing care in such
areas as mental health, reproductive health, health tourism, wellness management, cancer
survival nursing, disaster management, healthcare financing, etc, yet nursing does not plan
to meet these challenges. Financial management, for example, is hardly (if ever) in nursing
practice agenda. It is as if nursing care is not costly. A small example, is the wearing of
gloves. The ward aids wear gloves to make beds, to sweep the floor and to push trolleys.
Nurses wear gloves to test urine, to bandage an arm or to sponge patients. While wearing
of gloves may be acceptable at most times, nurses need to be aware of the cost of gloves,
unsterile and sterile. In general, nurses are not “taught” to think about cost. This situation
needs to change. Nursing practice needs a vision statement and a plan to meet the vision
which must include cost effective nursing care.

Currently, in the Internet, the only vision and mission available are related to the
Nursing Board of Malaysia but not to nursing practice and nursing service.

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
Globally, standards for clinical nursing practice focus directly on standards of care
which constitute the Nursing Process Model. The Model outlines six important steps:
Assessment, Nursing Diagnosis, Outcome Identification, Planning, Implementation and
Evaluation.

As mentioned earlier, the Study on Basic Nursing Competencies for New Graduates
of Diploma Programme (2009/2010) stated clearly that there was no evidence of the nursing
process being applied as part of nursing practice in all study hospitals.

Standards for profesional performance such as “quality of care”, “Education”,
“Ethics”, “Research”, etc. may have been spelt out, but the extent to which these standards
have been enforced and therefore evaluated must be ascertained. For certain, quality of