The Head of the civil service of the federation has confirmed officially the approval of the Unified scheme of service for nurses and one year internship program for graduate nurses in the service.
In a Memo obtained by a Nursingworld Nigeria correspondent, dated 27th September 2016 with Ref No: HCSF/EPO/EIR/CND/100/ST directed to the honorable minister of the federal ministry of health, Mrs Kehinde Adeyemi Director organization Design and development at the civil service commission referred to the memo submitted for the consideration and approval of the national council on establishments (NCE), she confirmed that the council at its 39th meeting held in Minna, Niger state in July 2016 approved a unified scheme of service for all nurses with the nomenclature ‘Nursing Officer’.
However, Career progression for nurses with only Nigeria Registered Nurse and Nigeria Registered Midwife (NRN and NRM) qualifications, beyond CONHESS 12 shall be subject to the acquisition of BSC Nursing degree from universities accredited by the National Universities commission.
In addition, approval has also been given by the council for the inclusion of internship programme in the scheme of service for graduate Nurses that have no prior NRN/NRM qualifications. Accordingly, Intern Nurses are to placed on GL.08 while qualified/post-Intern Nurses are to be appointed into the service on SGL09
Reacting to this new development, Jennifer Emelue of Nursingworld Nigeria noted that Nursing Interns are not disadvantaged compared to any other medical course studied in any university or any where else in the world and hence wondered why the disparity in entry point for intern nurses. She however recalled that it took justified agitations from the MLSCN and AMLSN before a corrected entry point for intern med lab scientist was issued by the Head of service, bumping their entry point from CONHESS 08 step 1 to CONHESS 08 Step 2. She prayed that such geture would be extended to correct this anomaly
The approved harmonized scheme of servie for Nurses including internhsip programme for graduate nurses would be reflected in the next edition of the schemes of service for use in the civil service of the federation, to be published soon.
