The Malaysian Ministry of Health is seeking to have more male nurses by taking in more males in the nursing programmes of training institutes.

According to the Ministry’s training management department secretary, Datuk Abu Bakar Othman, there are currently about 10% to 15% males in the training and the department is targeting an increase to 20%.

“Each year we take in about 3,000 students in two intakes, in January and July,” he said.

He also said the number of trainees was based on projections for their demand. “We don’t just plan to take say 1,000 trainees this year — no. It’s according to the human capital need,” he said, adding that at the moment, the number of nurses are sufficient, in terms of hospital size in the country.

Moreover, demand for nurses vary and depends on the number of patients, and to which, Abu Bakar said that hospital directors need to strike a balance in allocating nurses according to the needs of each ward.

He added that the Government had agreed to take 6,727 trainee nurses from private colleges from now until 2015 to complement the nurses from the ministry’s training institutes.

Besides nursing, the institutes offer diploma and certificate programmes in various disciplines such as medical assistant, pharmacy assistant, dental assistant and dental technology.

Advanced diploma and certificate specialisation courses are also offered for Health Ministry staff in service. At present 20,000 students are undergoing pre-service training while 2,000 staff are taking up specialisation courses.

There are 33 institutes nationwide, including four in Sarawak.

source:mjn-e-news