Posted by The Canadian Nurses Association’s National Nursing Week (May 10-16, 2021) commemorating the various roles that nurses play in a patient’s health-care journey, takes place annually during the week of Florence Nightingale’s birthday, May 12, which is International Nurses Day. Florence Nightingale is considered the founder of modern nursing.
Amongst the firsts in the medical field is Rufaida al-Aslamiya (born ca. 620), who lived during the time of the Prophet and is considered the first Muslim nurse and female surgeon. She frequently assisted her physician father, Sa`ad Al Aslamy. As she was restricted to practise medicine in the male-dominated field, she worked in field hospitals where casualties from battles were sent to her tent. Subsequently she became widely known for her medical expertise, also being the first to introduce a mobile care unit (Med Soc Talk). A wing at the Aga Khan University in Karachi is named after her.
At the inauguration of the Aga Khan School of Nursing in Karachi on February 16,1981, Mawlana Hazar Imam noted the important role of nurses:
“The School of Nursing’s primary mission is to raise the standards and standing of the profession itself, so that it is accorded the recognition and prestige earned and deserved by the women whose working lives are dedicated to the demanding and honourable task of caring for the sick. We are confident that the nurses in our hospital will be rewarded with respect, appreciation and remuneration that their integrity and loyal commitment justify. The key note to the the school’s philosophy is excellence.”
Mawlana Hazar Imam also stressed the importance of a progressive society dependant on healthy, productive individuals:
“Apart from the fundamental aim of alleviating suffering, a healthy population is vital for a country’s development to proceed with one of its most valuable resources – the human element – playing its role to the full. More than ever before, world agencies for development are reaching consensus that it is the investment in men and women, the ability to make every individual in society productive, which enables a country most rapidly to make economic progress.”
Extracts from Mawlana Hazar Imam’s speech published in Hikmat, July 1982
The Aga Khan University School of Nursing (AKU-SON) was established in 1980, three years prior to the establishment of the Aga Khan University that received its Charter in 1983. AKU-SON became the first operational academic unit of the Aga Khan University and the first school of nursing in the country to be affiliated with a university.
The AKU-SON has also accomplished many other firsts in Pakistan. It was the first to start a two-year Post RN Bachelor of Science in Nursing (Post RN BScN) programme for diploma qualified nurses in 1988; the first to start a four-year Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BScN) in 1997; and the first to begin a Master of Science in Nursing (MScN) programme in 2001. It is now the School of Nursing and Midwifery.
SONAM is the first nursing institution in Pakistan to launch bachelor’s, master’s and PhD qualifications in nursing which have opened up research, academic, and teaching careers in the profession. The PhD programme was launched in 2015. Pakistan’s first-ever doctorate in nursing has been awarded by the Aga Khan University’s School of Nursing and Midwifery, SONAM, to Khairulnissa Ajani, on April 30, 2021.
Sources:
25 Years in Pictures, Islamic Publications Ltd., London. England, 1983
Rafat Jan, Rufaida Al-Asalmiya, the First Muslim Nurse, Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 1996
Lamp lighting ceremony at the Aga Khan School of Nursing (2013), Aga Khan University
Rufaida Al-Aslamia, Muslim Heritage
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