Nurses association says admission quotas will ensure quality

The Ghana Registered Nurses Association (GRNA) has welcomed government’s decision to re-introduce the quota system in the admission of nurses into health training institutions.

According to Mr Kwaku Asante-Krobea, President of the GRNA, the decision was arrived at after consultations with all stakeholders and that the GRNA fully supports the move since it would ensure quality instead of quantity.

“We are in an agreement with it, we were consulted and we gave an endorsement to it,” he said in a radio interview with Accra based Citi FM Wednesday.

Explaining the reasons for the reduction, Mr Asante-Krobea said “its obvious that the health training institutions as it is now don’t have the capacity to admit the number of students they did last year but they were doing so because of the pressure of the candidates that were putting in their application and also from other stakeholder institutions.

Public and private institutions accredited to train nurses in Ghana will reduce their intake by almost 1,600 this year.

This follows a directive from the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) to the 75 accredited institutions training nurses in Ghana, including private ones, to admit students in accordance with an earlier discussion.

The directive was contained in a circular issued by the council and signed by its Registrar, Mr Felix Nyante.

“The Nursing and Midwifery Council of Ghana would like to respectfully inform you of the admission quota for the 2017 admissions to nursing and midwifery training institutions. This follows discussions held in Koforidua on June 27, 2017 on the subject matter,” the document obtained by the Daily Graphic said.

Last year, 7,335 students were admitted to the various institutions, but the number will reduce to 5,737 when the directive is implemented.

The figures mean that last year’s admission figure has been reduced by almost 22 per cent.

Source: Graphic