SQU, Starcare Hospital join hands for nursing training, research

Muscat: The College of Nursing at Sultan Qaboos University and Starcare Hospital, Muscat, signed a cooperation agreement that will help both organisations to collaborate over nursing training and research.
The partnership covers five key areas of co-operation that include continuous nursing education and professional development of nurses, collaborative research, third party audit facilitation, competency assessments and community nursing adoption.
The signing ceremony was held on September 25 at the College of Nursing under the patronage of Her Highness Dr. Mona bint Fahad Al-Said, Assistant Vice Chancellor for International Cooperation at Sultan Qaboos University. The agreement was signed by Dr. Omar Al Rawajfah, Dean of the College of Nursing, and Dr. Sadik Kodakat, Founder and Chairman of Starcare Hospital Group. The signing ceremony was attended by officials representing the two organisations.
The programme started with opening remarks by Dr. Huda Al Noumani, Assistant Dean of Training and Community Service College of Nursing. “Developing an active community nursing programme is one of the aims of this agreement. Community nurses in developed nations are now playing a key role in preventing avoidable hospital admissions by taking care to where people live. A lot can be done if both the private and public sectors can work together to achieve this,” Al Noumani said. This was followed by a brief note on the agreement by Al Rawajfah. Kodakat shared his views on the commitment of Starcare Hospital towards this strategic alignment with Sultan Qaboos University College of Nursing.
Commenting on how this alignment would benefit the country, Kodakat said, “Good nursing is at the core of all that we do in the healthcare field. Naturally, developing good nursing training systems is vital for maintaining high quality hospitals, medical centres and even community care programmes. At Starcare, we are pleased to be chosen as the private hospital partner for Sultan Qaboos University College
of Nursing.
“The aim is to pool resources from both sides and develop better and more effective training, research and quality assurance systems. Since Starcare Hospital has been pioneering various quality systems and accreditations in Oman, this will be a natural extension of what we do routinely. Having an environment of training, assessing, auditing and researching will keep our professionals at the cutting edge of knowledge, which I am sure will invariably help our patients and our clinical results.”
“It is expected that both Starcare and the College of Nursing would benefit from this collaboration significantly, bringing positive impact to the community of Oman. Together, we look forward to setting standards and being an example to all sectors by working together to achieve more. Public Private Partnership at various levels will be a welcome change to the future of healthcare in Oman,” said Dr Askar Kukkadi, Senior Consultant Paediatrician and Managing Director of Starcare Oman.
Marianna Kotze, Group Chief Nursing Officer for Oman, said, “Starcare is one of the first private hospitals in the country to have established a dedicated quality department. Similarly, we are developing nurse training and assessment departments to enhance our in-house skills, as well as bring more Omanis into the profession. We are very happy to be closely working with SQU College of Nursing to share knowledge and resources to realise this vision.”