Karnataka nurses' shortage: health providers' body seeks nod to open new colleges

The Association of Healthcare Providers (India) - AHPI, a collective of hospitals and other healthcare providers will ask the government to facilitate approvals for new nursing colleges.

Given the controversies around the functioning of nursing colleges, the previous government had restricted approvals and several private hospitals were unable to get permission, says AHPI's founder member Dr Alexander Thomas.

Private hospitals have been facing a shortage of nurses, despite the state having around 45,000 nursing college seats.

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According to job listing platform Indeed, Bengaluru was one of the top cities for nurse jobs in India, with a 9% rise in demand between April 2022 and April 2023.

But in the past two years, there has been a drastic mismatch between the demand and the interest towards nursing jobs, says Saumitra R Chand, career expert at Indeed India.

Nurse shortage is a pan-India problem, says Dr K Ramu, VP of the Trained Nurses Association of India-Karnataka chapter.

As per a report of the Indian Nursing Council last year, 4.3 million more nurses are needed in the country.

Doing a BSc Nursing course in private sector costs around Rs 7 lakh, but starting salaries in private sector can be as low as Rs 15,000.*

Though the government sector offers better salaries, currently recruitment is mostly for contractual posts which offer little benefits, says Dr Ramu.

Hence, more nurses are shifting abroad for well-paying jobs, as the demand increased there post-Covid.

Dr Thomas says there may be sufficient nursing seats in the state, but there is little demand for many colleges due to poor quality of training.

"Other than approval for more nursing colleges, we will recommend to the government to monitor the quality of colleges and follow due process such as inspections. Colleges should be able to facilitate good jobs for students in other states or countries," he says.

"Private hospitals should also have better policies for retention."

APHI is planning to recommend the introduction of more specialised nursing courses that offer nurses better career progression and salaries, such as the 'critical care nursing' course introduced recently.