Indonesian nurses need a proper management system: Survey

Sari P. Setiogi The Jakarta Post Jakarta

Indonesian nurses need better management systems and more education to improve both their knowledge and service, according to a survey jointly conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Ministry of Health.

"(For) the research -- we actually interviewed nearly a thousand people (nurses) from all levels of the district of health system -- and everybody was offering ways to improve through all the regencies and provinces," a WHO consultant on nursing and midwifery, Deborah Hennessy, told The Jakarta Post at the sidelines of the International Nursing Conference 2003 here on Friday.

"Everybody needs to know exactly what they are expected to do and have to do it well. And evaluating the quality is actually by monitoring ... and encourage people, give good feedback and help them if they are not achieving that standard. That's the management's responsibility," she said.

Indonesian nurses generally work without good management, with the result that they rarely improve their knowledge or skills.

For example, Budi Anna Keliat, the chairperson of the conference's organizing committee, said that in the mental hospital Marzuki Mahdi, Bogor, West Java, the average length of treatment was 115 days.

"After a practical model management on professional nursery under the International Standard Organization (ISO) was adopted there, treatment was reduced to 13 days or 14 days for a similar result," she said, "It is a big saving for patients and they are happy with that."

Most nurses actually wanted to change, said Hennessy, but as she found through the research that they did not know how to do it.

"We need to change the system but for a big country like this (Indonesia), it takes time," she said.

Dean of the Nursing School at the University of Indonesia Elly Nurachmah T. said she was concerned over the quality of nurses and midwives in the country.

"Nurses should give humane and holistic care to their patients, including their physical, psychological and spiritual conditions as well as their cultural background," she said.

She said that within a pluralistic society, particular approaches would be necessary to treat patients according to their own habits and culture, "And it will have positive impacts for their recovery time."

She, however, said the fact that 75.65 percent of Indonesian nurses had graduated from nursing schools (SPK) which were equivalent to high school, was also of a great concern because that is below international standards, in which an undergraduate degree is the minimum requirement.

Out of a total of 180,000 nurses, only about 4,200 nurses have an undergraduate degree, leaving Indonesia behind other countries in the region which have more educated nurses.

"What's more is that nurses who have obtained their undergraduate degrees are hired for managerial tasks, instead of serving patients," said Elly.