HALIFAX, NS — Advocates for improving healthcare in Nova Scotia are calling on the Dalhousie School of Nursing to change several key faculty policies. It is claimed that the current state of affairs within the department are not properly preparing nurses for the workforce. A formal proposal has been submitted to the faculty, requesting that numerous barriers facing students be heightened in order to prepare students for their eventual realities.
“For the last three years, we’ve recommended handing out 5-person group projects to 3-person groups in order to simulate the real world, but so far, our advice has fallen on deaf ears,” says healthcare reform advocate Siobahn LeBlanc.
“While some say status quo is bad enough, with students paying tuition to perform unpaid work terms, we think conditions should be worse still — instructors could hurl vulgar insults at the students while they train, or we could even inflict physical pain like spraying small amounts of mace in their eyes every time they start a shift,” explained Erin Burkinheimer, a nurse at the Halifax Infirmary.
To respond to the concerns from the community, the School of Nursing plans to implement a “traveling students” program that will grant non-nursing students taking first-year Biology, Anatomy, and Physiology courses twice the amount of credits for completing the same amount of work.
By Carl Miller