Change negative perception about profession, Nurses charged
The Registrar of the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Ghana (NMCG), Mr Felix Nyante, has charged nurses to endeavour to change the bad perception the public have about the profession.
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He noted that the attitude displayed by some nurses at the wards in various hospitals had made people have a bad perception about the noble profession, stressing that it was time practitioners did something about that perception by living up to expectation and doing what they had been taught in the classroom.
Mr Nyante gave the charge at the induction of 3,359 newly qualified nurses and midwives in the middle belt at Asante Mampong yesterday.
The inductees were from the various nursing and midwifery training colleges and allied health training institutions in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions.
They were made up of registered general nurses, community health nurses and registered midwives.
The midwives included 169 males, who formed part of the first batch of male midwives.
No shortage of nurses
Contrary to the widely held view that there was a shortage of nurses in the system, the registrar said there were many of them in the system.
He said the number of nurses trained every year was a testimony that “we have lots of nurses in the system to man our health centres and hospitals”.
The problem, he said, was the distribution of the nurses to hospitals and clinics across the country.
He, therefore, advised the newly qualified nurses and midwives not to refuse posting to deprived areas, as their services were most needed in those areas.
A health and development consultant, Mrs Abigail Kyei, also advised the health professionals not to discriminate in the discharge of their duties.
Some of the nurses at the induction ceremony
She said the profession required that practitioners treated every patient as they would their relatives and noted that if that was done, it would erase the negative perception about the profession.
Above all, she asked them to be professional in their work and also urged them to make the profession better than it was when they entered it.
Continuous upgrade necessary
The Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer in the Ashanti Region, Mrs Rita Anafu, reiterated the call on nurses to change the creeping bad perception about the profession through attitudinal change.
She also urged them to continue to upgrade themselves, in particular by reading not only about their profession but also other material.