Correspondence Address:
Dr. G Balamurugan
Registrar (Administration) & HoD- Department of Mental Health Nursing, Ramaiah Institute of Nursing Education and Research, Bangalore, Karnataka

Full Text



Sir/Madam,

The field of health care is constantly evolving and improving through advancements in technology and knowledge. Therefore, health-care professionals need to be up-to-date to deliver quality care to their customers.[1] Continuing education (CE) will help health-care professionals to keep them up-to-date with recent advancements in their respective fields.[2] CE will provide a mechanism for all professional colleagues to share their knowledge and learn from others' experience.[3] There are various disciplines involved in health-care delivery such as a physician, nurses, pharmacist, and physiotherapist. CE serves as a networking platform, which improves the interdisciplinary collaboration. There are various ways and means of continuing education such as conferences, workshops, journals, research articles, and online learning.

Being the largest health-care workforce,[4] nurses need to be updated their knowledge and skill. In India, the nurses are informally upgrading their knowledge and skill to perform their day-to-day duties; however, there were no formal Continuing Nursing Education (CNE) credit points. This is because of the “Life Membership” registration issued by the Indian State Nursing Councils. In 2012–2013, however, the Central Government of India and the Indian Nursing Council (INC) ordered the state nursing councils to renew their member's license for every 5 years with stipulated CNE credit points.[5]

Based on the new guidelines, a registered nurse (RN) should earn 30 CNE credit points/year for 5 years, the total amounting to 150 credit points in 5 years to renew his/her license. As per the National Health Profile (2019), there are 2,048,979 RNs are registered in various state nursing councils.[4] These 20 lakh nurses are in need to attend conferences, workshops, seminars, etc., to earn their credit points. As per the CNE guidelines of Tamil Nadu State Nurses and Midwives Council, 1-day CNE program (approved by the state nursing council) carries 4–6 credit points.[6] Therefore, each RN should attend at least 5–8 days of CNEs program per year to earn 150 credit points in 5 years.

For Indian nursing professionals, this is a major challenge to provide an opportunity for all these 20 lakh RNs to receive CNE credit points through conferences, seminars, etc., At the same time, these license renewal recommendations in developed countries are effectively implemented, which can be due to the availability of online CNE learning modules.[7] Online CNEs will be one of the measures to meet this big challenge. Hence, the online CNE may be one of the steps to tackle this major challenge.

Being a professional society, ISPN India is in pipeline to deliver online CNEs to its professional colleagues. In this regard, on March 09, 2018, Dr. T Dileep Kumar, the President, INC, inaugurated the “ISPN India Learning Centre” (https://ispnindialc.moodlecloud.com/login/index.php). As a pilot project, Dr. M Vijayarani PhD, Assistant Professor, ESIC College of Nursing, Bengaluru, had developed a short online module on Mental Status Examination and the same was hosted in the learning center. Certain modules will be rolled out based on the response to this pilot project. I, therefore, appeal to all readers to visit the ISPN India Learning Centre, sign up for this module and give your valuable opinion (you can also write to us info@ispnindia.org).

Wish you a prosperous new year 2020!

Happy learning!

Thank you!

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.

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