The government’s directive to give quotas to nursing trainee schools is to help improve the quality of nurses in the country, according to the Ministry of Health.
The Ministry believes this will also allow training institutions to produce nurses to meet the demands of the health sector, thus reducing unemployment.
This new directive means public and private institutions accredited to train nurses in the country will reduce their intake by almost 1, 600 in 2017.
Speaking to Citi News on the new development, the Public Relations Officer of the Health Ministry, Robert Cudjoe, explained the impact of the quota system will have on the nursing training schools.
“Some schools that were taking less last year are taking more and some that were taking more are now taking less simply because we did an analysis and came to the conclusion that some schools don’t have the facilities to admit the number that they have been recruiting and that is compromising quality.”
“As a nation, we don’t only have to train more health professionals but also look at the quality aspect so these measures are going to address some of these key issues.” Quality of nurses was compromised
The Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association has also thrown its weight behind the quotas despite the concerns that this will result in a shortage of nurses nationwide.
The President of the Association, Kwaku Asante Krobea noted on the Citi Breakfast Show that his outfit was “consulted and we gave an endorsement of it because we felt it was good enough.”
It had become clear that the training institutions don’t have the capacity to cater for the large numbers they were admitting, “because of pressure from candidates that were putting in applications and also from other stakeholder institutions.” This, in turn, compromised the quality of the nurses churned out, Mr. Asante Krobea added.
“We had situations where some individuals had completed the training but they lacked the confidences to confront the situations before them. Yes indeed, the quantity matters to us but the quality was compromised.”
Source: citifmonline.com