Para-Medical personnel such as Nurses, Radiographers, Pharmacists and Physiotherapists have never had or been given the opportunity to qualify as graduates in Sri Lanka. The scenario changed only when Athabasca University in Canada, which has had many years of experience in the conduct of a nursing degree programme for registered nurses by distance study, obtained in 1993 a five year grant, from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to financially support the provision of a similar programme in Sri Lanka. The first ever post RN degree programme that commenced at the OUSL in 1994 as a result of this collaborative link programme comprised effectively the last two academic years of an otherwise four academic year programme since the first two years was exempted for registered nurses. The passing out of the first lot of 21 nursing graduates in 1997 was indeed more than a historical event as it provided the first ever opportunity for para-medical personnel in the Sri Lankan health sector to assert their importance and provide the essential environment for their further development. The OUSL takes great pride and joy that its distance teaching methodology paved the way for this unprecedented though much delayed opportunity for nursing, in particular, to assert its professional status in Sri Lanka. The entire programme is now being run as an entire Sri Lanka programme since the CIDA grant is now over and the OUSL has been unable to find alternate sponsors to support a post-graduate degree programme in Nursing as well as commence a first degree programme in an area such as Pharmacy. The OUSL, for example, now has considerable human resources and expertise to play an important role in sponsoring similar collaborative programmes in other countries particularly in the Asian region. The OUSL waits in hope for the help and support of appropriate external funding mechanisms and appeals for the support of international organisation such as ICDE and COL to facilitate such sponsorship.
|