Nursing trainees’ quota system officially starts

The government via the Ministry of Health has introduced the quota admission system for nursing trainee schools, MyNewsGH.com can report.

The government has said the move is to help improve the quality of nurses in the country, according to the Ministry of Health.

The Ministry believes this will allow training institutions to produce quality 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 2000 nurses for the 2018/2019 academic year.

The Public Relations Officer of the Health Ministry, Robert Cudjoe, had earlier explained that the impact of the quota system will have on the nursing training schools will reduce pressure on the system.

“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.”

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 speaking on our sister media outlet Citi FM in 2017 said 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 individulas had completed the training but they lacked the condifences to confront the situations before them. Yes indeed, the quanitity matters to us but the quality was compromised.”