The crucial national examination which trainee nurses sit before they are licensed to practise was cancelled on Tuesday because of leaks.
The Nursing Council of Kenya said the examination, which was expected to be taken by 600 trainee nurses in private and NGO health institutions, would be held from next Tuesday.
Speaking to the Nation, the council’s registrar, Ms Elizabeth Oywer, said: “We decided to postpone the crucial examination after officials at one of our centres discovered that one of the cartons had been tampered with after a seal had been broken …
“We therefore decided not to take any chances and after further consultations, we directed our officials to return all examination papers to the council.”
On Tuesday, Ms Oywer said the council was carrying out investigations to determine how the carton was tampered with after it was delivered by courier firm G4S.
The registrar termed the leakage “unfortunate”, saying that students had already completed carrying out rehearsals at 23 centres for the four-day examination.
Ms Oywer held a closed-door meeting on Tuesday with the chief nursing officer who represented the Health ministry and members of the council’s secretariat to discuss the issue.
The council is mandated to conduct examinations and also register nurses to enable them practise in public or private hospitals.
The leakage is said to have been detected in parts of Central and Eastern provinces, prompting the council to stop candidates from sitting them countrywide.
The papers were taken back to the council headquarters as the management locked themselves in an emergency meeting on how to set new examination for next week.
Government medical colleges and universities training nurses also suffered the same fate, with trainees complaining that they would stay longer in colleges. Some of them said they were privately sponsored and were short of cash.
At the same time, the government has stopped full-time courses for its employed nurses pursuing nursing degrees at public universities, a circular seen by the Nation shows.
The move was taken to avert the shortage of nurses at public hospitals because hundreds of them were cleared to take full-time courses without replacement.
They will only be allowed to attend part-time classes as they worked at their stations.
More than 800 nurses leave the country every year to seek employment abroad, especially in the United States.
Most of them are women aged between 30 and 46 years working in the public health sector and are highly qualified, statistics at the Nursing Council of Kenya show.
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