By Naa Norley
11 September 2007
In an attempt to redeem the image of general nursing in the country, the Ghana Registered Nurses Association (GRNA) has organized its first appraisal meeting dubbed "media encounter" to assess and improve upon nursing care and delivery in the country.
Addressing the media, Mrs. Alice Darkoa Asare- Allotey, President of the Association, noted that nurses played a major role in achieving the socio-economic development of every nation. She said the wealth of every nation largely depended on the health of its citizens for which the people themselves were partly responsible.
Mrs. Asare- Allotey emphasized that nurses had a heavy responsibility in the process of promoting health, preventing illnesses, curing sicknesses and alleviating suffering.
She said nurses rendered health services to individuals, family and the community and coordinated the services of related groups.
Quoting from a renowned nurse the President said, "the unique function of a nurse is to assist the individual sick or well and in so doing contributes to the good health of the person".
She also noted that nurses had binding legal and ethical obligations to ensure the well being of the population, and being the single largest body of accredited health professionals in the health care delivery system, it cannot afford to compromise its role.
Mrs. Asare-Allotey noted that the growth in population of any country in a dynamic world would present challenges to the nursing profession.
According to her, Ghana with a population of 21 million has a patient-nurse ratio of 1581 to 1 noting that a nurse-patient ratio of this nature would definitely affect quality healthcare because the nurse would be over-stretched.
Enumerating the work of nurses, Mrs. Asare-Allotey said, "nurses are the only professionals whose work extends into other health professions. In the absence of a medical officer, nurses diagnose and treat, prescribe and issue drugs, collect revenue and act as cashiers and also as cleaners and specimen collectors."
The national President noted that the work of a nurse would only be complete when the other team members were around to make the circle work and added that the incorporative nature of other team members might have a negative impact on the nurses' performance.
Mrs Asare-Allotey lamented the numerous challenges facing the nursing profession citing poor environment, limited equipment to work with, lack of career progression, low remuneration, insecurity (such as a poor pension), violence at work and lack of recognition. She said effective health care is paramount in service delivery. The President regretted the unfortunate description of a nurse as just any female health worker, including the unskilled ones.
Touching on the exit of nurses in search of greener pastures in developed countries, Mrs. Asare-Allotey said stringent measures had been put in place for nurses to serve a stipulated period before receiving their certification as health workers.
In a solidarity message from the WHO representative Dr. J.Saweka, read by Dr. Charles Fleischer Djoleto, a family health and population officer of WHO, Dr Djoleto noted that the 2006 World Health Day toolkit highlighted the crucial importance of health workers and identified the key issues and priorities for action that countries and its partners in all sectors could take.
Dr. Saweka said health workers were heroes, working for long hours in difficult conditions often with little reward and sometimes at a risk to their own health. He added that without the devotion of health care workers such as these, public health services would be in crisis, unable to cope with the ever-growing burden of disease.
He added that "WHO acknowledges the role health workers play and it is a step in the right direction that health workers are given the recognition they deserve for the vital contribution they make to our lives. It is high time they are paid decent salaries and provided with right working conditions and the right equipment to do the work they are trained to do."
Dr. Saweke observed that preventing and treating disease required assessment, delivery and monitoring by health workers. Worldwide, national health systems are finding it increasingly difficult to train, support and retain their health workers. These problems are directly undermining the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and addressing the direst situations such as disease epidemics and natural disasters.
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