The Virtual discussion has been held on Nursing students’ employment and the on-going new nursing education curriculum status at Jimma University.
United Arab Emirates officials including health professionals, Jimma University officials, JU health professionals, Jimma zone health office, Ministry of Education representatives, Ministry Health representatives, and invited guests have taken part in the online discussion. Engineer Abdurahman Ali, the head of the Institute of Applied Technology at UAE, has led the virtual discussion and invited Dr. Jemal Abafita, Jimma University president to make an opening remark following the introduction of the participants.
Dr. Jemal reflected the existing reality of Jimma University’s nursing students’ status in relation to the historical background of the establishment of the health institute in brief. He added, working with the Fatima College of Health Sciences (FCHS) enables us to pull foreign instructors to ensure the quality of Jimma University’s nursing education, which has been already started admitting 60 students with the curriculum adapted with UAE at European standard education.
Engineer Abdurahman opened the floor for discussion asking about the current reality of Ethiopia, particularly Jimma University’s nursing education. The discussion followed by the participants on issues like; nurses’ salary, education quality, training infrastructure and facility, staff mobility, staff training, etc. have been raised in relation to nursing employment.
Dr. Tadesse Habtamu, vice president for academic affairs responded on the issue and said quality nursing education that has been commenced at nursing school based on the curriculum adapted with FCHS, helps a lot to solve unemployment and incompetency problems which will be scaled up to other health programs.
Dr. Elias Ali, vice president for Health Institute also commented on the employment and salary drawbacks with the nurse profession in Ethiopia, which ought to be solved with quality nursing education. He added the new harmonized curriculum that has been underway in Jimma University Nursing School is an ideal example to solve the shortcomings.
It is remembered that the implementation of the harmonized curriculum between JU nursing school and Fatima College of Health Sciences has commenced four months ago.