The Registrar of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (N&MC), Mr Felix Nyante has indicated that the council will start grading health training institutions — from A to F— to reflect the quality of health professionals they are training.
He, therefore, urged health training institutions to employ qualified tutors for the programmes they are offering, stressing that a low grade would mean the institution does not have the requisite human and material resources to trained nurses and midwives to deliver quality service to their clients.
Mr Nyante said this at a credentialing forum for two Nursing and Midwifery training institutions — Catholic University College Ghana, which is already offering nursing and midwifery courses but seeking re-accreditation and FLOSAM Institute of Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Sciences, located at Suhum, seeking fresh accreditation.
He advised health training institutions in the country which are still offering certificate and diploma programmes to start the process of upgrading to degree-awarding institutions, adding that the quality of health care given to patients depends on the quality of training received by health care professionals.
The N&MC during its 50th-anniversary celebration last year, launched the first credentialing forum as part of its accreditation process for health training institutions running nursing and midwifery programmes to ensure the institutions have the required lecturers and facilities to run the programmes.
My Nyante said the function of the council is to set standards by ensuring that any health training institutions, existing or new, meet a minimum criterion set by the council.
The N&MC, he said, over the years has been carrying out this function with health training institutions but “this time around we want to scale our operations up by injecting some quality improvement mechanisms into it by making it more transparent through a credentialing forum. The idea is we want every principal or proprietor to sit up…in terms of quality insurance in the training institutions,” he added.
ISD
