Mrs Philomina Adjoa Nyarkoa Woolley, the Registrar of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) of Ghana, has announced the introduction of a new academic curricula for the training of nurses and midwives in Ghana.
She said the competency-based curricula, which would be introduced to the current first-year students in the various nursing and midwifery training colleges in the country, was designed with lots of changes without the usual objective tests students were familiar with.
“So, the students will learn the content, the skill, and the attitude. For instance, if it is how to dress a wound of a patient, the students will learn the knowledge, that is the content, then they will learn about the skill, how to dress the wound, then the attitude, how to speak to the patient,” she explained.
Mrs Woolley said this when she addressed staff and students of the Midwifery Training College in Bolgatanga as part of her three-day working visit to health training institutions and some selected healthcare facilities in the Upper East Region.
Mrs Woolley disclosed that apart from the content, skill and attitude, the new curricula contained references after every course for students to read adding that, “With these new curricula, we have lots of practical sections, which are even more than the theoretical section.”
The Registrar indicated that under the curricula, students would sit six examinations, “So you will take examination in mental health nursing, public health, surgery and surgical nursing, medicine and medical nursing,” she said.
Mrs Woolley said the curricula was designed to meet international standards and noted that “When our students go aboard, and they ask; did you do medicine? We say is in the general paper, but they are usually not sure. So, we want to go back to what we used to do.”
She said most students in the training colleges envisioned to work in the United Kingdom, the United States of America among other foreign countries, and that the new curricula were designed to meet international standards.
The Registrar said the new curricula would be launched before the end of 2025, and that after the launch, the NMC would zone the various colleges for tutors to go through and understand the vision of the curricula and properly impart it to students.
Madam Margaret Azusiyinne, the Vice Principal of the College, commended the Regulatory Body for the initiative to introduce the new curriculum, and noted that a similar curriculum was used to train nurses and midwives several years ago.
She expressed concern that the current curricula were not standard as compared to their days as students and said present day students perceived NMC examination as easy compared to semester examinations conducted by the colleges.
“Sometimes, students tell us that they fear our school examination as compared to the NMC examination because they know is objectives, they can guess and pass. So, for me, I am very happy about the new curricula,” the Vice Principal said.
Apart from the Midwifery Training College, the Registrar and her team on the first day of their tour, visited the Nursing Training College, Bolgatanga, and later met with Senior Nursing and Midwifery Managers of the Regional Hospital, and proceeded to the Regentropfen College of Applied Sciences (ReCAS) at Namoo in the Bongo District.
On day, two of the tour the officials visited the Community Health Training College, the War Memorial Hospital and the Clement Kubindiwo Tedam University of Technology and Applied Sciences (CKT-UTAS) all in Navrongo, and are scheduled to conclude their tour at the Nursing and Midwifery Training College at Zuarungu.
