Tracking nursing: On the Nurses Registration and Tracking System

For a country where the human resources in health care will always fall short of the recommended patient-professional ratio, it is important to make sure that every single resource is harnessed. However, government data tabled in the Lok Sabha have shown that the Nurses Registration and Tracking System, created over seven years ago, has registered less than a third of the total nurses in the country. Only 14.24 lakh of the 46.02 lakh registered nursing personnel have been enrolled, leaving 31.78 lakh outside the national system . Clearly, the move to create an accurate national registry and streamline registration-related services on a single platform for all nurses is far from yielding satisfactory results. There are also stark regional disparities, and unexpected performances with the large southern States (Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh) figuring among the laggers, while Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha show between 80%-99% enrolment rates. The Indian Nursing Council has attributed the delays to issues rooted in jurisdiction, and federal tension, on the grounds that primary registration is legally the responsibility of individual State Nursing Registration Councils. To receive a National Unique Identity card and nurse passbook, nurses rely on verification by their respective State Nursing Councils. Further, the charge is that several State councils have resisted migrating fully to the central portal and continue operating independent parallel systems.