PESSI to build new nursing college

Governing body meeting decides to hire senior staff to run institute

LAHORE:

The Punjab Employees Social Security Institution (PESSI) has decided to build its own nursing college at Social Security Hospital on Multan Road.

For this purpose, the organisation has decided to engage a nursing director or a consultant.

The approval for the position as a first step towards laying out the college plan has been approved from 154th PESSI governing body meeting chaired by Labour Minister Ansar Majeed Khan.

An official privy to the development shared that as many as 251 primary medical outlets and 20 hospitals were being run by PESSI across the province.

The proposal tabled before the governing body highlighted that a major role in the provision of healthcare to patients is provided by the nursing staff. Currently, a total of 680-charge nurses and 130-nursing sisters are deployed at different PESSI hospitals.

As per the Minimum Service Delivery Standards (MSDS) criteria, one-nurse, eight-beds in each shift in general ward and one-nurse, two-beds per shift in ICU is recommended.

The proposal further recommended that to meet the criteria and to provide the best healthcare facilities to patients, the services of nurses are essentially required.

In order to improve the healthcare and be self-sufficient in nursing staff, PESSI plans to establish its own nursing college at Dr Osama Riaz Shaheed Ward, SSH Multan Road which would need minor structural changes to come up to the pre-requisites of PNC Pakistan nursing college, Islamabad and UHS.

The PESSI officials in the meeting were stressed that there was a need to set up the nursing college on war footings, hiring of a nursing director or consultant is required to perform strategic analysis and propose an action plan for project initiation and completion.

It is also needed for the monitoring and execution of the project as per the criteria of PNC.

Defining the role, PESSI further pledged that the consultant will be responsible for starting classes after fulfilling all formalities of licencing and affiliation.

The consultancy position also involved project implementation strategies, managing and assigning the responsibilities to the team, implementation of project activities, inspection and recognition of college from the regulatory body (PNC) and examining body (UHS) and completion of project within the time frame.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 29^th, 2021.