The Nurses and Midwives Council (NMC) has appealed to student nurses to be studious in order to stem the “high failure rate in its licensing examinations”.
Mrs Philomena Wooley, Assistant Registrar of the Council, said this at the unveiling of a bust of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, at the Ho Nurses Training College.
“The Council is very much concerned about the high failure rate in its licensing examinations,” she said.
She urged the students to emulate Florence Nightingale’s passion for knowledge by asking critical questions in their studies and strive to find answers to them.
Mrs Woolley said Florence Nightingale’s invaluable legacy to Nursing and Nursing Training “Notes on Nursing” were borne out of her experiences as a nurse.
She urged the student nurses to be inspired by some distinguished and accomplished Nurses in the country, two of whom have won international awards.
Mrs Woolley urged the students to reflect the totality of Florence Nightingale’s humility, selflessness, passion for neatness and hygiene and knowledge.
“Are you going to tell your patients that serving bed pans are for other categories of nurses who are no more in the service? she asked.
Ms Comfort Agbodza, the Deputy Director of Nursing, said about 95 percent of deaths in the hospitals could be blamed on the quality of care some nurses were giving to patients.
Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820 to a well educated and wealthy family in Florence where she took her forename.
At 17 she developed an interest in nursing that her parents considered inappropriate for a woman of her class and background. They however relented and she trained in nursing in Germany for three months.
At the time of the Crimean war the War Minister asked her to oversee a team of nurses in the military hospital in Turkey where she greatly improved the conditions and substantially reduced mortality rate among the soldiers.
She returned to England and established the Nightingale Training School leading to the establishment of more nurses training schools by her students on her model.
Her Nightingale’s theories published in “Notes on Nursing” 1860 became highly influential.