Council builds capacity of 540 examiners
The Nurses and Midwives Council of Ghana is, this year, building the capacity of 540 examiners who are its members to improve the licensing and examination assessment of the council.
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The workshop, which is part of a series of a capacity-building programmes organised every two years, is being held concurrently for examiners in two centres in the Greater Accra and Ashanti regions.
At the opening of a three-day workshop in Accra for registered nurses and midwives who are examiners, the Registrar of the Nurses and Midwives Council of Ghana, Mr Felix Nyante, said the council runs 139 programmes for the licensing of nurses and midwives.
He said the capacity-building programmes for the 540 selected examination assessors in 2017 started in April 2017 with the training of 60 examiners known as the master training programme at Nsuta, near Ashanti Mampong.
Aim
Mr Nyante said the training, which is expected to end by the second week of May, was in five phases; with the aim of equipping and improving the quality of the work of the examiners to ensure that licences issued to nurses and midwives in Ghana were credible.
He said the council also hoped that some bad attitudes such as interrupting candidates during examinations, could be changed, adding that: “Sometimes we put people in some positions and expect them to work but we do not equip them.”
He added that the workshop was expected to equip the examiners with adequate skill and knowledge to improve the licensing of nurses and midwives.
To the participants, he said: “You serve as gatekeepers; if you do not keep the gate well, we will have chaff in the system, but if you keep the gate well, we will have good nurses and midwives.”
The council, he explained, was a statutory registered body established by an Act of Parliament and mandated to secure public interest in the highest standard of training and practice for nurses and midwives.
“Even if a nurse is trained oversees and wants to practise in Ghana, that nurse would have to be regulated, while others trained in Ghana who want to practise outside Ghana must be validated,” he stated.
Mock examination
Later, some registered mental health nurses who are also examination assessors participating in the workshop staged a mock examination where the candidates tried to attend to the needs of a mental patient, while two examiners and three independent observers observed and awarded marks on their performance using a specially designed and structured rating tool.
The candidate need to score above 55 per cent to pass.
The council explained that examination assessors were registered nurses and midwives with at least a first degree, over five years practising experience and must apply and go through screening before qualifying to become an examiner.
One of the participants, who is a tutor at the Ankaful Nurses Training College in the Central Region, Ms Felecia Asare-Nyedu, said she was optimistic that the training would sharpen her skills and help her better prepare her students for examination.
