President John Mahama has endorsed what he described as a “major proposal” where the Ministry of Education would supervise all nursing and health training institutions in the country.
Hitherto, such institutions have been under the purview of the Ministry of Health.
However with the worrying spate of unemployed nurses and other health personnel – most of whom are churned out by unaccredited institutions – it has become necessary that such training institutions are moved under the Education Ministry.
The decision is currently being considered at the cabinet level, President John Mahama told Ho-based Volta Star Radio on Thursday. The President is in the Volta Region as part of his “Accounting to the People Tour”.
“There is one worrying phenomenon that I think we should take note of. There are few nursing training schools, privately established, that do not have accreditation from the National Accreditation Board and yet they are turning out nurses, and that is a worry.”
Earlier this year some privately trained nurses were angered by the president’s directive to health institutions to first employ nurses trained by the state before considering others.
In a subtle reference to that, President Mahama explained that state trained nurses are bonded because their education was subsidized by government, “so our first obligation is to bonded nurses”.
“Like I said private training institutions that are turning out nurses, some of them are accredited, yes that is true, but others are not accredited but they are coming out and saying we are nurses we are unemployed.
“That needs to be streamlined that is because nursing training is still under the Ministry of Health. I think that we must move all training institutions under Ministry of Education and if that is done, then the Ministry of Education is better able to supervise accreditation of these institutions.”
Source: Isaac Essel | tv3network.com | Ghana