Advances and perspectives of Bachelor in Nursing and Obstetrics’ Curriculum at Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social’s Nursing School

Abstract

Since its beginning the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS) has considered the preparation of nursing staff; for that reason since 1947 the first nursing school was funded in Mexico, City. Currently there are seven campuses, six of which are strategically placed in five states of the country. All of them, besides offering the attending school system, also, offer the curriculum to grant a diploma as bachelor in nursing, and 11,796 graduated students in two academic levels technician and baccalaureate. Since an agreement in 1985, with the Escuela Nacional de Enfermería y Obstetricia from UNAM, la Escuela de Enfermería del IMSS en Monterrey, Nuevo León, was started an updating course to grant the Bachelor in Nursing degree, within the educational modality of Starting on latter years than the first one through the Distance University System (SUA). In this program, were graduated 354 students until August, 2001. By October, 8th of the same year, and after signing the agreements, it was implemented the nursing professionalization program for technical personnel who worked into the IMSS. Until now, with academic cycles 2003, 2004, and 2005 and covering 34 IMSS delegations, 411 and 393 students have been graduated from the first two generations, and 905 students are expected to be graduated by the end of June of this year. It is evident the response and acceptation of this educational program by the institutional nursing personnel, which contribute to reach the initial goal of 4,000 nurses with a nursing baccalaureate degree. However, the challenge is that these numerical achievements show the professional praxis of nurses in their own working fields, underneath the understanding that knowledge and professional grounding support the care with a high level of responsibility.