Soroti nursing school turns classrooms into dormitories

Congestion. One of the residents goes past the fence of the nursing school last week. The administration has turned three classroom blocks into dormitories to ease congestion at the school. PHOTO BY GEORGE MURON

What you need to know:

  • Dr Chrysostom Muyingo, the minister of Higher Education, said there are plans to rehabilitate comprehensive nursing schools in Uganda.

In a move to ease congestion at the Soroti School of Comprehensive Nursing, the administration has turned three classroom blocks into dormitories as one of the oldest nursing institutions grapples with accommodation issues.
This leaves the institution with only three blocks to study from out of six.
According to the institution’s principal, Ms Celina Alicemari Bako, the situation at hand has made the administration to alter the teaching timetable to allow four shifts, unlike before when they had a single shift.

She added that because of the limited space, the tutors cannot have an environment to train more than 500 students.
“The facilities at the institution can only accommodate a total of 200 students, but these numbers have increased in the last seven years because more students have continued to express interest in nursing and midwifery,” Ms Bako said.
She noted that the school is short of space to allow room for expansion, fearing that this could worsen in future as more students are expected to be enrolled.

Consequences
The president of Uganda National Association of Students Nurses and Midwives (UNASNM), Mr Daniel Waweyo, said such study environment affects performance of students.
He added that students require adequate resources for them to comfortably study, saying the current environment presents a lot of challenges to them.

The vice chairperson of Soroti District, Mr Simon Peter Edoru, said government through the ministries of Health and Education should improve on the current facilities at the nursing school, since some of them are becoming obsolete.
He said as a district, they can only allocate land but government should do their best to allocate enough funding to put up modern facilities for a favorable learning environment.

“The number of students interested in taking up nursing courses was too small by the time that school was planned. Now that there is an overwhelming number of students enrolling for the course, government needs to allocate resources for the expansion of the school,” Mr Edoru explained.
According to some students, the furniture is also inadequate in the lecture rooms.
Dr Chrysostom Muyingo, the minister of Higher Education, said there are plans to rehabilitate comprehensive nursing schools in the country.

Government speaks out

Dr Chrysostom Muyingo, the minister of Higher Education, said there are plans to rehabilitate comprehensive nursing schools in Uganda.
He said the first budget was to have all regional hospitals renovated, which is currently being done; adding that next in the pipeline is the upgrading of all health training institutions under government in the country.
However, he urged tutors in both government and private health training institutions to ensure they equip students with total quality health management training skills.