By Lydia Kukua Asamoah/Mariam Haruna, GNA
Accra, Nov 5, GNA-Over 5,000 nurses, nurse assistants and midwives who sat for the Nursing Examination, passed and qualified in 2017, were on Monday inducted into the nursing profession by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (N&MC) of Ghana.
The inductees, represented newly qualified health professionals from the Southern zone ‘A’ comprised of the cluster of schools from the Volta, Eastern and the Greater Accra Regions.
They formed the first batch of the over 22,000 inductees to be inducted by the N&MC this November from all over the country.
The Reverend Veronica Mina Darko, Chairperson of the 14th Governing Board of the N&MC led the induction ceremony by taking the inductees through the « Nurses’ Pledge » and the « Midwives Prayer ».
Mr Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, Minister of Health congratulated the inductees for successfully completing their nursing and midwifery programmes.
He advised them to be guided by their oath and pledge in the « increasingly difficult, ethical, life and death decisions you will make throughout your professional lives ».
He said the government was working together with the stakeholders to improve Ghana’s health systems by ensuring that the right number of adequately trained healthcare workers were in the right places.
He said the government was also ready to provide the needed support framework and infrastructural development to help the professionals to leverage on and work to impact on the lives of the citizens.
Mr Agyeman-Manu announced that under the Digital Ghana Agenda, and with support from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Ghana, had become the first in West Africa to conduct online licensing examination for nursing and midwifery candidates.
« The process, I must admit is more efficient, effective and credible. After examination, I was informed that the release of results would be done in 20 working days instead of the 70 days for written exams.
« But to my surprise, the results were released within 10 working days and the good news is that those who were successful have registered for postings for the National Service whilst their colleagues who did the written will be expecting their results in December this year.
« This is a clear demonstration of how efficient and beneficial the system is to nursing and midwifery education, practice and regulation in the country ».
The Minister called for the training of more preventive and specialised nurses that could reach out to people in the hard to reach areas of the country with specialised health care services.
He used the occasion to congratulate Ms Sophia Safia Sulamana, a midwife at the Kunkwa district in the Northern Region, who was also part of the inductees, for delivering a pregnant woman of a baby boy at 0300 hours while on board an Accra-Bolgatanga bus on Sunday, September 23, 2018.
Ms Sulemana, was said to have had improvised polythene bags as gloves to receive the baby, got a blade from a passenger to cut the umbilical cord of the baby and pulled out a string from a sack to tie the cord.
The Health Minister who was full of praise for Ms Sulemana said: « had it not been for her intervention, the story would have been different ».
He later presented a motorbike, a hospital kit and a citation of honour, on behalf of the Ghana Health Service and the N&MC to Ms Sulemana for her timely intervention in the situation.
Professor Lydia Aziato, Acting Dean, School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Ghana, advised the newly inducted professionals to live by their core values of professionalism in providing quality care to all persons.
« You should use your head, heart and hands in delivering quality health care to people », she added.
