More than 300 Indian diploma-qualified nurses – currently registered and working in New Zealand – are being audited to double-check their competency.
The nurses were all registered prior to the Nursing Council late last year reassessing the Indian nursing diploma as being a lower level qualification then previously thought.
The diploma reassessment caught out a number of Indian diploma-qualified nurses, already studying in New Zealand in hope of gaining registration, resulting in a march on parliament followed by a hunger strike in July*.
At the time one of the hunger strikers said if the council believed his diploma only entitled him to work as an enrolled nurse then it should cancel the registration of all other Indian RNs with the same qualification.
Nursing Council chief executive Carolyn Reed said after discussing student allegations the Council went back through its records and identified about 350 Indian diploma-qualified nurses it had registered over a number of years. (The council has registered more than 1000 Indian-qualified nurses in the past three years).
The decision was made to carry out a recertification audit of the Indian diploma-qualified RNs – a near identical process to the random audit carried out of five per cent of all nurses each year – to reassure the council, the public, employers and the nurses themselves of their ongoing competence to practice.
Gary Lees, chair of nurse executive group NENZ, said NENZ had been briefed by the council throughout the process and supported the council’s approach “as it is very important to reassure the public that all nurses registered in New Zealand meet the standards of practice that are expected”.
He said the council expects district health boards to have processes to support nurses being audited and these supports would apply to the Indian nurses as well.
Reed said the council’s consistent stand during the controversy this year was that each international registration decision was made on a case-by-case basis.
“Many of those (diploma-qualified nurses) have got other qualifications so their registration wasn’t just predicated on their diploma,” Reed said. “We could have left it at that but the council does take its duty to protect public safety seriously.”
“Once we knew that the (diploma) qualification was lower than we thought we had an obligation to reassure the public that the nurses were competent.”
The only difference from the random audit process is that only a senior nurse can carry out the competence assessment. Nurses who are signed up to a council-approved professional development recognition programme (PDRP) are exempt from the audit.
Reed said it wanted to stress that the council valued the contribution of internationally qualified nurses but needed reassurance that the nurses had the knowledge, skills and competence required to practice in New Zealand.
“Many of these people have worked (in New Zealand) for long period of time so I think it will be quite a positive experience for them - that they will be given affirmation of their competence.”
She said the council did regular analysis of competency complaints to Council and “there’s nothing there to indicate concerns at this point”.
Reed said the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance (HPCA) Act allowed them to carry out a recertification audit on any nurse and if a nurse is found to be incompetent they can be required to do further study.
Letters were sent out in November to about 300 affected nurses and also to their employers asking them to support their staff member meet the recertification audit requirements by the February 8 deadline.
(*The hunger strike was by Indian nursing students not eligible for the solution offered to students and graduates of the now axed Waiariki and UCOL nursing school bridging degree programmes.)
