Centre to establish All India Institute of Post-Graduate Nursing Education

India aims to establish a nursing health cadre to supply skilled nurses to the world, capitalizing on the country’s reputation as a source of top-quality healthcare professionals. As part of the plan, the government plans to set up institutes for training nurses modelled on AIIMS.

The government plans to set up the first All India Institute of Post-Graduate Nursing Education and Research in Gauripur, West Bengal. The institute will offer advanced courses, including PhDs, post-graduate diplomas and Master of Science (MSc) programmes. It will offer nurse practitioner programmes in seven clinical specialities, including critical care, forensic nursing, neonatal nursing, burns and plastic surgery nursing, orthopaedic nursing and oncology nursing. The aim is to position India as the world’s top producer of post-graduate nurses, as outlined in the National Health Policy of 2017. Currently, India doesn’t have a comprehensive specialized nursing education and training curriculum.

“Public health is incomplete without nursing, and it is a very crucial component that was missing. Setting up state-of-art nursing colleges is the need of the hour and a priority of the government. We want to project nursing education and research as the world’s top producer of post-graduate nurses, as mentioned in our National Health Policy 2017. Simultaneously, Indian Nursing Council is being revamped, and newer courses will be added gradually,” an official said, requesting anonymity.

The plan also involves setting up a National Nursing Commission, for which a cabinet note has already been moved, a second official said.

Queries sent to a health ministry spokesperson remained unanswered.

“These will be post-graduate nursing institutes of national standards. It will be beneficial to patients and doctors at large to avail of specialized nursing care. As of now, we do not have specialized nursing care. For example, a nurse is trained in paediatrics for a few months and can get transferred to some after department. Actually, there is a very small number of post-graduate skilled nurses, and we need to upgrade it. Besides, it will also stop the brain drain of the nurses and further create job opportunities for nurses in India. So, we want India to be the hub of nursing cadre for the entire world,” said the first official.

As part of its Union budget on 1 February, the government announced plans to establish 157 new nursing colleges alongside existing medical colleges set up since 2014.

Since states oversee healthcare, these institutes will fall under state jurisdiction. Currently, only a handful of nursing colleges in Delhi are under the central government’s purview, including Lady Hardinge Hospital, Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, and Rajkumari Amrit Kaur College of Nursing.

The government also intends to introduce a public health speciality in nursing as part of the initiative.

“This campus will be constituted as a second nursing campus of the main campus of Gauripur. This institute will help us in producing MSc in community health nursing and general nursing and midwifery, along with a diploma in public health nursing,” the official said.

According to the Indian Nursing Council, India needs 86,000 post-graduates in general nursing and midwifery, and hardly any institution is producing such trained nursing professionals. LiveMint