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Dr. Rozina Karmaliani
First PhD Nurse Returns to Her Alma Mater
"I want to see nurses participate in health system development, that
is the focus of my teaching and research,” says Dr. Rozina
Karmaliani, the first PhD alumnus of the AKU School of Nursing
(AKUSON) to return to her Alma Mater.
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| Family marches in the
academic procession: Dr. Rozina Karmaliani with her baby
and husband, who also graduated in Education Policy and
Administration. |
Dr. Rozina Karmaliani is Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences,
AKU, and is jointly appointed at AKUSON (70%) and Community
Health Sciences (CHS) (30%). Nursing remains her major area
where she has had 15 years of professional education encompassing
five years of intermittent experience. She joined AKUSON in
1985 and completed her baccalaureate in 1991, while working
at CHS. Her increasing interest in nurses’ role in health
policy and management eventually culminated in a Master in
Public Health (MPH) degree and a Master of Science in Nursing
(MScN.) degree, both from the University of Minnesota, USA.
In 1995, she returned to CHS and AKUSON as a teacher and Community
Health Nurse Coordinator, and then went for her PhD in 1996.
"At every stage, I believed I needed more theoretical and practical
knowledge to participate in bringing changes at policy and
health systems level."
Her thesis was ‘Inter-sectoral Collaborative Dynamics
and their Effects on Systems Change: A Case Study on Healthy
Families Initiative’. She is presently developing it into
a manuscript for publication. When asked as to why she came
back, even though her PhD and Master’s programmes were self-funded,
she says, "In the USA, one gets absorbed in the system
but at AKU and in Pakistan, you can bring changes to the system
which makes a difference in the nursing profession."
She is presently teaching in Master’s of Health Policy and
Management at CHS, providing leadership to various national
and university level committees, and is also working on the
curriculum of MScN. programme that is to be launched later
this year.
Despite her enviable professional qualifications, she does not undermine
the importance of practice. "I don’t want to miss the
initial contact with the community; I go to field sites and
work with staff and students to have hands-on experience,
for this closes the gap between theory and practice."
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