The Ministry of Health (MoH) is planning to write to government hospitals, asking them to stop entertaining any nursing colleges after the Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training (CTEVT) started preparations to grant affiliations to nursing and other allied health programmes. 

Many nursing colleges, established without their own health institutes, are flouting the law by showing government hospitals as their teaching hospital. The Section-3 of “Guidelines on Standards of Health Facility Establishment, Operation and Upgradation, 2014” states that the private hospitals or nursing homes and community hospitals cannot run health programmes with government hospitals as their teaching facilities.

Health Minister Gagan Thapa said none of the government hospitals will entertain the nursing colleges without their own hospitals. “We will stop the malpractice and ensure that the colleges follow our guidelines,” said Minister Thapa, adding that the ministry will send a letter to the hospitals on Friday.   

The Health Ministry’s decision to direct hospitals follows an attempt by the Ministry of Education to affiliate over half a dozen certificate level health courses in the middle of the academic session. Education Minister Dhani Ram Poudel is said to have been proactive in granting the affiliation. None of those institutions have their own hospitals—a clear breach of the 2014 Guidelines.

Meanwhile, a CTEVT council meeting, scheduled for Thursday to take a decision on affiliation, was cancelled after a protest by the CTEVT staff union.