According to him, nurses must always uphold the tenets of the profession by not only working hard to help save lives, but must also exercise utmost patience and tolerance in handling their patients.

He has, therefore, entreated nursing and midwifery training institutions in the country to inculcate such virtues into their students to prepare them well to carry out their work diligently upon completion of their respective courses.

“You have to produce high quality and competent human resource who would come out to work to restore the hard- earned reputation of the profession,” the director added.

Event

This was contained in a speech read on behalf of the director by a Chief Nursing Officer at the Ghana Health Service, Hajia Ayishetu Adjei, at the 12th matriculation of the Yendi College of Health Sciences at Yendi in the Northern Region last Saturday. It was on the theme: “Effective time management, a key to success.”

In all, 212 students which included 119 females were admitted to the college for the 2018-2019 academic year to pursue programmes in Registered Nurse Assistant (clinical), General Nursing (RGN) and Mental Nursing (RMN).

According to the Principal of the college, Mr Raymond Kunsu, although over 600 qualified applicants were interviewed for admission, the college had to stay within the quota offered them by the Ministry of Health.

Challenges

Mr Kunsu mentioned some challenges that were militating against the growth of the college to include inadequate classrooms, offices and accommodation for both tutors and students.

The college is also indebted to various suppliers and contractors to the tune of GH¢300,000.00 as of June 2018.

He, therefore, appealed to the government and other stakeholders to contribute towards the advancement of the college.

The principal, however, stated that in spite of the bottlenecks, the students were performing well in their academic work.

He announced that the school obtained a 100 per cent pass in an online RMN final licensing examination conducted by the National Midwifery Council (NMC) in September, 2018. “They were the best in the country out of three schools that wrote the said examinations,” Mr Kunsu said.

He added that in the RGN diploma examination conducted in June, 2018, by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), the students obtained 86.7 per cent pass.

For his part, a chief at the Yendi Area, Bindana Ayuba Ziblim Ahmed, advised the matriculants to follow the steps of the pioneer in nursing, Florence Nightingale by always upholding the core values of the profession.