Short on faculty, 20 nursing training centres told to stop admissions

Several nursing training centres in the state have been asked to stop admissions for the academic session 2022-23 after they failed to appoint the required number of faculty

Several nursing training centres in the state have been asked to stop admissions for the academic session 2022-23 after they failed to appoint the required number of faculty. The revelation about the shortage of teaching faculty came to the fore in a verification exercise by the medical education department.

UP State Medical Faculty (UPSMF) conducted a comprehensive faculty availability verification exercise across the training centres. During the first round of telephonic verification, it was found that 161 of the state’s nursing training centres (at diploma level) had less than 50% of the mandated faculty-student ratio. (FOR REPRESENTATION PURPOSE)

“UP State Medical Faculty (UPSMF) conducted a comprehensive faculty availability verification exercise across the training centres. During the first round of telephonic verification, it was found that 161 of the state’s nursing training centres (at diploma level) had less than 50% of the mandated faculty-student ratio,” said Alok Kumar, principal secretary, medical education.

Admissions of about 1500 students will be affected collectively at 20 nursing training institutes, said Kumar.

Notices were sent to these training centres, and 32 centres were identified that had either not responded to any communication or had not started sending the mandated biometric attendance to the regulator.

Later, a final round of e-verification was carried out where the identity of each tutor was verified through video calls at these 32 centres, using their registration documents and Aadhaar cards.

“Five centres did not turn up for the e-verification exercise, while six turned up with fraudulent cases, and nine were unable to meet even the 40% benchmark set for verified faculty. The largest number of defaulting centres were found to be at JP Nagar and Mathura, 3 in each district,” said Kumar.

The Indian Nursing Council mandates a 1:10 faculty-student ratio for nursing training centres across the country. To ensure compliance with this norm and provide good quality training to students, UPSMF, the regulatory body for diploma-level nursing and paramedical education in the state, mandated biometric attendance for all faculty and students at training centres.

It was noticed that most training centres were not sending biometric attendance, with some facing genuine technical issues. To resolve these issues, SMF organised a workshop through video conferencing in the third week of June, which was widely attended by representatives from nursing training centres.