6 new modules in nursing care

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria (NMCN) have developed six new modules in nursing and midwifery education to help practitioners better care for mothers and children.

The six modules are to become part of the Mandatory Continuing Professional Development Programme (MCPDP) nurses and midwives go through once in every three years to renew their practice licence.

The new modules include clinical management of victims of rape and female genital mutilation, psychosocial support, adolescent sexual reproductive health and youth-friendly services, long-acting reversible contraception, and update in contraception technology.

Others are emergency obstetric and newborn care, respective maternity care and obstetric fistula prevention, and elimination of maternal to child transmission of HIV, according to Rabiatu Sageer, of UNFPA.

This week, administrators of MCPDP met in Abuja in efforts to get the modules into curriculum nationwide.

States will also develop action plans to roll out the modules in existing continuing-education curriculum for nursing care.

“The essence of this programme is to ensure that nurses are equipped with knowledge and skills of these thematic areas that we identified. We believe that updating knowledge is something that must be done regularly,” said Alheri Yusuf, a former director at NMCN, which regulates nurses and midwives.

“Nurses and midwives, being the critical mass of health workers in our various facilities, are supposed to update their knowledge regularly.”

Emmanuel Udontre, a senior official of the NMCN’s education department, said, “We expect the implementation at the state level. We do not want it to end here. We expect that as the facilitators go back, they will start the implementation at the state level.”