Volume 9 Number 2 August 1995

Discussion

high as 45.4% is a serious one. The high attrition rate (51. 3% ) seen among females is similar to that of medical students (4) .The reported rate at long females is quite alarming in view of the MOB's intention that at least 75% of the admissions are to be females (5). If such is the case, its implementation requires the development of a learning strategy that improves the performance of female students. The high attrition rate (33.6%) is caused by a number of factors (Table 5). They are related to the characteristics of the student; the

teacher, the teaching-learning situation and the learning environment. For example, having too many credit hours was stated by the students as a major cause for academic dismissals. In our opinion, this is understandable because they are expected to finish a training program designed for three years within two and a half years. Although further study is recommended, there is a need to increase the training period to three years . And as part of reducing the attrition rate, intensifying and redesigning the English course, provision of active counselling and improving the competence of the teachers are among areas that deserve attention. In addition, there is a need to improve the motivation of instructors to teach. As 8 out of 9 instructors were dissatisfied with their profession. Since all are diploma holders, they are disadvantaged by the university regulation interms of academic rank, salary scale, allowances, accommodation and other incentives provided to degree holder academic staff. In this case, it is difficult to ensure commitment to teaching and to attract competent instructors. Although low pay, low status, few prospects for promotion and education are common in many poor countries, unless the situation improves, it will be difficult to bring fundamental changes in nursing education (6). Parallel to this, there is a need to revise the content of the curriculum in terms of its validity, sequence, learnability and time distribution. Although this issue was raised in several workshops, sufficient weight has not been given for its implementation so far (7,8). Furthermore, among the non-professional subjects, the relevancy of history and geography courses to the nursing profession should be further studied.

Table 3: Students and instructors responses to the cause of academic dismissals

selecting students to study nursing. Finally, as nurses are expected to provide increased coverage of health care, there is an urgent need to re-orient and improve nursing education. And if this challenge is to be met, more research related to the training and practice of nursing is required.