Director General of the Ghana health Services, Dr. Anthony Nsiah Asare has said that the reduction in the intake of students into public nursing and midwifery schools to only 60 percent of the school’s capacity will ensure that quality nurses are trained for the country's health sector. According to him, the regulatory body of the nursing profession in Ghana, nurses and midwifery council came up with this directive to check teacher to student ratio and class sizes at the various training facilities whiles ensuring that quality training is not compromised. ''If care is not taken, we might train a lot of nurses into the system who might have little or no knowledge of how to give injections because nurses are not just trained in the classroom but in hospitals and given special practical lessons as well''. Dr Nsiah Asare claims, the nurses and midwifery council has resolved to make sure that no public or private nursing training facility admits more students other than the quota given them by the regulatory body. He noted that though there has been regulations set by the regulatory body, enforcement of such regulations are mostly ignored by people in charge, a situation the council hopes to reverse and as a result churn out well trained nurses into the health sector. Dr Nsiah Asare assured that the decision to reduce intake to 60 percent has nothing to do with allowances of trainee nurses as some people suspect but born out of the need to train good quality nurses to meet international standards. He also downplayed assertions that the decision is as a result of the many trainee and bonded nurses who have recently picketed at the ministry of health to demand job postings. Source: otecfmghana.com
