Represented by attorney Dr. Avraham Cohen, seven chareidi petitioners against the new directive announced by Deputy Health Minister R’ Yaakov Litzman, who has set a standard requiring a minimum score of 500 on a psychometric exam for a female to become eligible for entry in the Laniado Hospital Nursing School. Chareidi nurses insist the decision is out of place and will not serve to improve the standard of nursing, but it will pose another stumbling block for chareidi women seeking to enter the nursing program.
The new ruling demands the new minimum standard must be met on the psychometric exam, and it cannot reflect a combination of the exam and one’s high school matriculation scores.
It must be pointed out that unlike nursing schools in Hebrew University, Hadassah and Assaf HaRofeh, graduates of the Laniado program do not receive an academic degree. According to a Kikar.net report, the new directive is indeed discriminatory, against the chareidi sector, adding females from the Bedouin community are not bound by the same regulation as a component towards accepting into the nursing field.
Attorney Cohen points out that the decision is totally administrative, without any trace of legislative action, the decision of one man, insisting Litzman has exceeded the authority of his position. He adds that today, there are hundreds of nurses employed in the healthcare system who never earned a 500 score on their psychometric exam. No one would dare claim that because they did not earn a 500 they are endangering patients and no one would expect them to immediately cease working.
Cohen adds that many chareidi nursing students come from large lower-income families and the new directive would demand spending NIS thousands on courses to prepare them for the psychometric exam, money that they do not have and even if they achieve a 500, it will not contribute in the slightest to the candidates becoming better nurses.
(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)
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9 Responses
a professionally written article would include a response from Litzman’s office.
This is a ridiculous assertion, that R’Litzman is discriminating. Do the petitioners think that modern nursing can be accomplished without professional training, including the use of diagnostic instruments, electronics, and evaluations that require an understanding of statistics, biology, and many other disciplines? Let’s put it this way. Would you rather a chareidi nurse for your sick child who has accomplished the necessary education and scores, and is fully capable of treating with the most modern techniques? Or would you rather a chareidi nurse with woefully inadequate preparation for nursing school struggling to get through the courses and barely graduating with incomplete competence?
In any case, I don’t understand why serious chareidi and other frum nursing school candidates wouldn’t look to go to one of the best and most modern nursing schools in the country, The School of Nursing at Jerusalem College of Technology’s Machon Tal Women’s campus in Givat Shaul. Not only is it run by the former head of the Shaarei Tzedek Nursing school, but it offers a Bachelors degree and a nursing certification, in a frum, women only environment, where a large proportion of the day is spent in Torah learning, and halachic issues and sensitivity in nursing are part of the curriculum. JCT also offers prep courses to bring chareidi and other students up to college level in their matriculation, if the candidate is prepared to make the commitment.
Many chariedim are getting a technical college education already through JCT’s Machon Naveh and Machon Lustig programs, and it has the haskomah of many gedolim. So what’s the problem? Get competent, get ready, and become a professional. Don’t look for an easy way to achieve a goal, especially when lives depend on your professionalism.
I live in the USA and here it’s the doctor who needs to go to the top medical schools. Do nurses in Israel make medical decisions? I have been in Israeli hospitals and of course the nurses have to know what has to be done but I don’t think they need top training to attend to the needs of the patients?
I a upset by some of the comments written here.
The nursing school in Laniado is specailly there to help frum girls study in a frum enviroment.
I am aware of several people who have taken the course over three years.
If they need a higher entry score then the frum girls will have to go to a non-frum place to gain that score defaeting the purpose for which the course has been established.
There are quite a few American girls on the course.
1) The main thing is that this is a fine tumult. The one who makes the most tumults wins. Without a good tumult, people get very bored.
2) How can anybody think of paskening on such an issue with his own daas? This is what we have a mesorah for. What were the scores in Europe for nursing schools in the alter heim by all the ehlicher yidden?
The nurse is a vital ember of our team. he or she implements medical orders and monitors the patient – the Dr. is rarely present. #4 – you may be satisfied with half trained nurses – they are not the choice for my family and friends. I guess you believe in affirmative action for chareidim.
#1 – I’m with you there.
#6 – Thank you for making light of the issue, and of the concept of mesorah. You really know how to have an intelligent debate about an issue.
The issue here is not the competence of the course, rather the requirements to be accepted to it.
Why do hareidi girls have to become nurses? There are plenty of nurses from other sources to go around. Nursing in this age of high-tech instruments and complicated drug prescriptions requires knowledge of science and technology. How can you understand half of the required knowledge if you’ve never taken chemistry? Biology? Let the chareidi girls study computers or something else they can learn on the job. Why should they take on a profession where they are not qualified and ch’v risk killing someone out of ignorance?