By
Christabel Addo, GNA
Accra, Sept. 25, GNA – Dr Kwaku Asante-Krobea,
the Principal of the School of Peri-Operative and Critical Care Nursing,
Korle-Bu, on Tuesday said the School will stop at nothing to raise the
standards of post graduate education for specialists.
“We believe we have what it takes to deliver
and we fervently wish that all stakeholders will continue to strengthen our
tenacity and determination by maximising their support to this endeavour,” he
said.
Dr Asante-Krobea was speaking at the launch of
the School’s 20th Anniversary celebrations in Accra on the theme: “Peri-Operative
and Critical Care Nursing: Past, Present and Future.”
He said the School had prevailed through many
trials to carve a niche that could stand the test of time.
He promised to give the Ministry of Health
more than it expected from the School by producing quality health care
specialists who would remain at the forefront of care among their
generation.
Dr Asante-Krobea said the School currently had
on course an arrangement to run its degree programme concurrently with a
sandwich, which aims at retraining advanced diploma holders to acquire degrees
in their respective fields, while rolling on a new degree programme in Blood
Transfusion, as an additional course in collaboration with the National Blood
Service.
He recounted the long journey of the School,
from being a small establishment housed within the rented premises of a
Ministry of Health facility at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, with no
secretariat and a defined administrative structure or a budget arrangement to
work with.
Dr Asante-Krobea said the School was then
heavily dependent on assistance from existing institutions of like-mindedness
and expertise of already burdened technocrats and health professionals,
however, “by dint of hard work, we are now a transformed academic institution
that has what it takes to support other institutions both in existence and yet
to exist”.
He expressed gratitude to the academic staff
and other stakeholders for their assistance in transforming the School into its
present state of Graduate School of Nursing that admitted degree and
diploma-holding practicing nurses and midwives.
One thousand professionals had been trained
since the establishment of the School in 1996, Dr Asante-Krobea said, and that
the stakes were still high with the path arguably dreary, giving the
circumstances of the present times where socio-economic and political pressures
exerted overwhelming influence on all endeavours.
The Principal, however, said it was his utmost
conviction that the present position was “just the landing shores of many
trials where the billows keep rolling, that which is akin to the conditions we
found ourselves in when we were just a teeny entity of a post-basic yet a
valuable programme among the health training institutions in Ghana”.
The constrains such as the limited space to
accommodate the increasing number of students, lack of logistical support, and
the recruitment of specialised academic and professional human resource was
still a challenge to the School’s resolve to achieve distinction, he said.
Dr Asante-Krobea said Ghana was still
struggling to provide patients with safe and adequate Peri-Operating Nursing
and Critical Care Nursing, a situation which was counter-productive to both
sound surgical outcomes and critically-ill clients.
Dr Sylvester Yaw Oppong, a Senior Lecturer at
the University of Ghana Medical School, applauded the founders of the School
for laying a solid foundation for the training of such a critical cadre of
health professionals.
He was, however, worried about the high
attrition rate of these critical human resource to other western countries and
called for effective interventions of motivation and retention as their role
was crucial in the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals and
Universal Health Coverage.
He, therefore, urged the Government to
prioritise their needs and commit more resources for their training.
Dr Oppong also challenged the professionals to
ensure positive attitudes, calve a niche for themselves, be diligent and
respect their patients, and maintain a high level of professionalism to change
the current public perception about the practice.
Mrs Eva Mensah, the Director of Nursing and
Midwifery at the Ministry of Health, who represented the Minister,
congratulated the institution for its numerous achievements.
She admitted that it was the responsibility of
the Government to strengthen and invest in Nursing and Midwifery to ensure a
triple impact of promoting health, advancing gender equality and strengthening
local economies.
She pledged the Ministry’s commitment to
supporting the training of all critical health care professionals amidst the
challenges imposed on its critical health agenda by the global burden of
diseases, where, it had to channel scarce resources into building a resilient
health system.
Mrs Mensah said the Ministry would soon
inaugurate the long awaited Governing Council of the Ghana College of Nursing
and Midwifery mandated to train specialists in those fields and also the
Nursing and Midwifery Council to regulate their practice.
GNA