By Samuel Ansah Boateng
The management, alumni and students of St Karol School of Nursing; a private accredited nursing university located off the Malam Kasoa highway and affiliated to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology has lauded the Akuffo Addo led government for its effort in securing financial clearance and placement for several health workers including those trained in private health institutions.
On the challenges faced by accredited private health training institutions, the founder of St Karol School of Nursing; Dr. Caroline Ackim stated that in the wake of the Covid19 pandemic, there are several things to be grateful for.
“We can list our difficulties as a people, but we would rather talk about the good things happening in our sector.
Worthy of mentioning is the postings of our graduates and the scrapping of quotas.
In 2019 government recruited 54,000 health workers including nurses from public and private institutions. This year over 90,000 nurses have been posted by the National Service Secretariat. We are optimistic that the trend would continue and be consolidated for the betterment of our shared future as a country, she revealed.
St Karol School of Nursing has been in the news recently because of her commitment to training customer-centric nurses that dare to care. St Karol is focused on turning out nurses with high professional standards who treat the patient as the import of the healthcare business. “Our nurses are on a mission to exceed the patient expectation and make every patient’s experience special.
St Karol School of Nursing is eternally grateful to the government for giving us the opportunity to serve the good people of Ghana”.
Background
It will be recalled that in 2017, nurses picketed at the Ministry of Health for days for what they called government’s failure to post them. A coalition of over 3000 qualified nurses from accredited nursing training schools believed that government was discriminating against them in the posting of health workers. The spokesperson for the protesting nurses Doreen Boaten disclosed that they are all qualified to be recruited by the government.
Reacting to their concerns, Sammy Awuku; the national youth organizer of the NPP on Friday August 11th 2017 appealed to the government through the Senior Minister, Hon Dr. Yaw Osafo Maafo during a presidential youth dialogue held at the Osu Castle Gardens, as part of activities by the national youth authority and other collaborators to mark international youth day. “They are running to government for help. I think our government must end the picketing so that they can also make ends meet” he said.
Whiles applauding the government for acceding to the petition of the privately trained nurses, Dr. Caroline indicated that the country still have nurse to patient ratio deficits according to the World health organization standards.
“We have the strategic capability and the competence to train more nurses with increased enrollment at the SHS.”
Dr. Caroline further applauded the government for its ‘working abroad’ initiative which is to mainstream the brain drain to the advantage of trained professional nurses.
The need for trained professional nurses is international, there are deficiencies almost everywhere and that opportunity must be harnessed for the benefit our youth strategically. The trained youth is the employable youth, she said.
Approximately 3,000 nurses are set to be sent to Germany through the National Youth Employment agency’s working in abroad project. CEO of National youth agency Justin Kodua Frimpong made the disclosure in Accra. Countries that have made requests for nurses include Germany, Canada, Australia and Barbados.
On the part of Germany, Dietnar Brockes, chairman of the committee for European and international affairs stated earlier in the parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia, federal state of Germany. He made the disclosure in Kumasi to engage the services of the Ghanaian nurses for Germany. Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mortley during bilateral discussion with the President of Ghana His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo also requested trained Ghanaian nurses to help fill their nurse’s deficit gap.
In conclusion Dr. Caroline revealed that Expansion of both private and public health institutions to harness the potential of the Ghanaian youth economically is the way forward. Resourcing the healthcare sector and leveling the playing field for both public and private health training institutions is laudable. We must avail stress free admission of qualified and willing SHS graduates to nursing. This is the constructive and positive way of creating employment for the youth through the health sector training
