Nurses urged to be innovative in healthcare
Mr Emmanuel Atakorah, Central Regional Registered Nurses Chairman, has appealed to nurses to live up to expectation by adopting acceptable innovations that would impact positively on healthcare delivery.
Mr Atakorah made the appeal at a forum to launch the Nurses Week celebration by the Central Regional branch of the Ghana Registered Nurses Association at Breman Asikuma on Thursday.
It was on the theme: “Closing the Gap: Achieving Millennium Development Goals four, five and six.”
The launch, the first to be held outside the regional capital, would include activities such as blood donation, voluntary testing and HIV/AIDS counseling and health talks on community radios.
Mr Atakorah said nurses and midwives constituted large number of healthcare professionals within the healthcare fraternity among other valuable professional partners in the country.
He mentioned pharmacists, doctors, physiotherapists, bio-medical scientists, radiographers, dieticians and nutritionists as some of their partners.
The Chairman said: “To a large extent, nursing and midwifery contribute in the healthcare continuum, influence the direction of managing disease burden across communities in preventive, curative and rehabilitation dimensions.”
According to him, in recent times, as disease management had become more complex with the emergence of new disease conditions, health seekers were becoming aware of their rights to respect, dignity and quality care from care givers at the same time.
He stated that whilst addressing the needs for human-centered care that would meet the needs of their clients and health seekers, they would resist all attempts by the employer to undermine the interest and welfare of today’s nurse and midwife, who were playing a pivotal roles to achieve the MDGs goals.
Mr Atakorah expressed the hope that by the end of 2015, the country would close the unacceptable gaps in infant and maternal mortalities and HIV infections.
Sister Paulina Essuman, Nurse Mother of Our Lady of Grace Hospital (OLGH) at Breman Asikuma, reminded her colleague nurses that the profession they had chosen was by a call and not by chance, adding “it is a ministry which has been entrusted us by the Lord Jesus Christ for His healing ministry.”
She said: “We are custodians of the health of patients, who seek health services in our various facilities, and we should know that as health workers have accounts to give…it is about time we reflect on our attitudes towards patients and their relatives.”
Reverend Sis. Edwige H. Gaba, in-charge of OLGH, who launched the Week, urged nurses to use the occasion as a platform for reflection and stock-taking of their contribution to healthcare delivery.
Source: GNA