A Deputy Health Minister, Aboagye Gyedu, has warned public and private nursing training schools against flouting the directive to reduce their intake.
“Let me take this opportunity to send a note of caution to every principal, that the ministry is not going to tolerate anybody who flouts this particular direction,” the Minister stated in an address to residents of Takoradi as part of the President’s tour of the Western Region.
[contextly_sidebar id=”adYEPWAO0eZ97zJm1445RohK4ZPMiJd9”]Mr. Gyedu insisted that the quota put in place is to ensure and improvement of the quality of nurses.
“We want to ensure that the training environment is optimum so that you come out with the best knowledge and skill that you need to serve our people.”
Mr. Gyedu also stressed that “it has nothing to do with the payment of allowances that we promised our people.”
Congestion was identified as a problem in the training institutions and the directive, arrived at in consultation with the Health Infrastructure Regulatory Authority and the Nurses and Midwifery Council, to remedy this problem
“What the nursing training colleges do is that, if you give them a quota, they exceed it. We are trying to be very firm, that this time around. In order to decongest the nursing and midwifery training colleges, we sent these two institutions to go round, do their checks and they have come out with an optimum number of people we can admit into the various nursing and midwifery training colleges depending o their capacity,” Mr. Gyedu explained.
This directive affected 75 accredited institutions. In 2016, 7,335 students were admitted to the various institutions, but the number will reduce to 5,737 when the directive is implemented.
The quotas increased the admission spots for most private nursing training institutions by 38 students — from 899 in the 2016/2017 academic year to 937 this academic year.
But a number of the institutions which admitted higher numbers of students have had their intake reduced.
On the other hand, some of the private nursing training schools had the quota system offering them more students than they admitted in 2016.
–
By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana