Number of nurses trained yearly have reduced due to quota admission system – Lecturer

Introduction of quota admission system has affected the health sector, Lecturer

Health institutions recruiting less than their capacity, Boamah Mensah

Rural residents feeling the impact of reduced number of nurses trained, Lecturer

A nursing and midwifery lecturer, Adwoa Bemah Boamah Mensah, has said the introduction of quota admission system by the government for the training of nurses and

Read full articlemidwives in 2018 has reduced the number of nurses trained yearly in Ghana.

Boamah Mensah, who lectures at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), said this has created a huge deficit in the number of nurses and midwives needed in the country, myjoyonline reported.

According to her, although health institutions in the country can train more personnel, the quota admission system has reduced the number of applicants that they can recruit.

The lecturer indicated that rural communities are the most affected by the reduction in the number of nurses trained yearly

She added that the reduction will adversely affect Ghana’s SDG efforts.

“Are we training more nurses? In my view, No. This is because of the quota system that was introduced some few years back. As of now, if you’re a training institution in the country, you cannot admit all the numbers that apply to your institution. We are not training as many nurses as we need,” myjoyonline.com quoted Boamah Mensah.

“Those of us living in the city may not feel this, but move to the rural communities, you would go to very remote communities and you won’t have a midwife or a nurse there to attend to patients and this affects them since they are also citizens and deserve quality health service as being propagated by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” she added.

Meanwhile, the President of the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association, Perpetual Ofori Ampofo has said the quota admission system was needed to ensure that the government continues to pay nursing trainees their allowances.

Government through the Ministry of Health introduced the quota admission system for nursing trainee schools to help improve the quality of nurses in the country.

Under the system, public and private institutions accredited to train nurses in the country were asked to reduce their intake by almost 2000 nurses for the 2018/2019 academic year.