Father Muller College of Nursing (FMCON) and the Switzerland-based School of Nursing of HEIG-VD (University of Applied Science in Engineering and Management), owned by the Swiss government, will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on an exchange programme between them. “If everything goes well, it will be signed in 2012,” Denis D'Sa, Administrator, FMCON, told The Hindu on the sidelines of an international conference held by FMCON on “Translational research: nurses making a difference” here on Wednesday. A team of four members from the Swiss institution visited FMCON five months ago in connection with the exchange programme, he said.
The exchange programme is at a stage that is “a lot more than talks”, said Jerome, Fevord, professor of community psychiatric nursing at the Health Campus of the University of Applied Sciences, Western Switzerland, and a clinical nurse specialist in Community Psychiatry Service, Lausanne University Hospital Centre, Switzerland, who is in Mangalore on a visit sponsored by the Swiss government.
He said it would help understand how other countries resolve common problems. “I would want (Swiss) nurses to spend time in Mangalore. Travel opens your mind and gives you a comparative view. What is a big problem here is no problem in Switzerland and vice-versa,” he said.
He said that he would visit the psychiatry section of Father Muller Hospital on Friday to know what his students could learn from here.
Inaugurating the conference, B.M. Hegde, former Vice-Chancellor of Manipal University, said: “Nurses can really make a difference today... doctors have no time to talk to patients.
In the U.S., if doctors take more than seven minutes, they are seen as uneconomical. How can you understand (the patient), but the nurse is with the patient day in and day out,” he said.
Translational research transforms scientific findings into clinical tools and applications that can be used in patient care and promote public health.
Nurses, as primary personnel involved in patient care, play an important role in identifying effective strategies that work best in practice.
Patrick Rodrigues, Director, Father Muller Charitable Institutions, said that maintaining public health required several inputs, new discoveries and practices, which had to be translated into applications.
The experience that nurses gained should be codified so that its benefit reached patients.
He said that nurses went for higher studies and away from their patients.
“If this continues, nurses with higher knowledge, degrees and intellect will not be with patients,” he said.
“Hold on to care (of patients), which is the core of your profession,” said Anice George, Dean of Nursing, Kasturba Medical College (KMC), Manipal.
K. Reddamma, Director of Nursing, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, said that research should make a difference in the lives of the common man.
