The Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives’ Association (GRNMA) has kicked against a decision by the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) to enrol Senior High School (SHS) graduates to assist Nurses at Community Health Planning and Services (CHPS) compounds.
According to the association, despite the demanding work schedule of Nurses at CHPS compounds, the YEA has no reason to enrol SHS graduates when there is already a backlog of unemployed nurses waiting to be employed.
A statement issued by the association on Monday, 22 August 2022 noted that: “Indeed the work in these rural communities can be quite daunting for CHNs to the extent that they can hardly have time to attend to their personal and career development issues. They therefore require assistance but not from Senior High School (SHS) graduates.”
It indicated that there are 10, 727 Nurse Assistants (Clinical and Preventive) who already “had accessed the MOH’s recruitment portal and were waiting to be posted to various parts of Ghana.”
The association stressed that more than half of the number are “Nurse Assistant (Preventive) who are also appointed as CHNs. In total there is a backlog of over 20,000 nurses and midwives of all cadres belonging to 2019, 2020, 2021 batches also awaiting employment.”
It further noted that it therefore finds the YEA’s decision to train SHS graduates to “help nurses with services, including recording medical history and symptoms, conducting physical examinations, providing simple bedside care to patients, mostly in rural communities as very disturbing and a clear displacement of Ghana’s priority to achieve the targets of Sustainable Development Goal 3(SDG 3) and Universal Health Coverage by 2030.”
The YEA had indicated that government will by the end of August 2022, employ about 5000 SHS graduates to CHPS compounds across the country.
Deputy Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the YEA, Alhaji Ibrahim Bashiru made this known at the Ghana Job Fair.
The SHS graduates will be employed to assist Nurses with services including recording medical history and symptoms, conducting physical examinations, providing simple bedside care to patients among others.
