Nurses attitude to patients deplored

October 12, 2007.
Story: Albert K. Salia
THE President of the Ghana Registered Nurses Association (GRNA), Mrs Alice Asare-Allotey, has urged nurses not to hide behind the constraints facing them to perpetuate discourteous acts towards their clients.
She said a recent self appraisal by the association showed that the public had no problem with the skills of nurses but rather the way they communicated and received patients.
“We are aware of the constraints facing us but should we hide behind these and be rude or communicate unprofessionally with our clients,?” she asked.
Mrs Asare-Allotey was speaking at the opening of the 23rd annual and 11th biennial national delegates congress of the GRNA in Accra yesterday.
It is on the theme “The Ghanaian Nurse, upholding the vision of quality care beyond the Golden Jubilee”.
Mrs Asare-Allotey noted that the way nurses received their patients had about 60 per cent healing on them.
She, therefore, called on all nurses to join hands with the GRNA to wage a crusade against the negative attitudes of some of their colleagues.
“The association would not condone such negative acts and will collaborate with the employer to discipline those who are found wanting,” she said.
Commenting on other challenges facing the profession, Mrs Asare-Allotey said out of a conservative figure of 40,000 nurses needed in the country, only 13,381 were at post and called for the gap to be closed.
She, however, made it clear that it was not only numbers that mattered but the quality of nurses produced, given the appropriate tools and equipment to work with, motivation and the remuneration, were of equal importance.
Mrs Asare-Allotey also expressed concern about the non-recognition of nurses who had upgraded themselves and suggested that the issue needed to be critically addressed.
A Nurse Consultant, Dr (Mrs) Jemima Dennis-Antwi, noted that documented and anecdotal reports attested to the poor quality nursing care resulting in “the public looking upon us with disdain, scorn and mistrust”.
“Issues in migratory trends in nursing, poor working environment, inadequate or non-existent resources, poor attitudes to patients and family, poor quality training in our pre-service institutions, limited conditions of service, future insecurity, violence at the work place and lack of recognition, among other factors, have been noted as the challenges and for that matter the reasons for the dwindling quality of services we are currently providing,” she added.
Dr Dennis-Antwi urged Ghanaian nurses to be guided by the principles to nursing, adapt to changing circumstances and suffer the discomfort of change in order to achieve a better future.
She urged them to put in place structures and strategies that would stand the test of time and ensure that posterity judged them right.
She also expressed concern about the springing up of many private nursing institutions and wondered whether government policies were strong and comprehensive enough to ensure that those institutions maintained the Nightingale philosophy while redefining the new Ghanaian nurse.
Dr Dennis-Antwi called on the Office of the President of the GRNA, the Nurses and Midwives Council for Ghana and the Office of the Chief Nursing Officer to co-ordinate their functions so as to develop a strategic vision for nursing in Ghana.
In a speech read on his behalf, the Minister of Health, Major Courage Quashigah (retd), called on nurses to exhibit a high sense of professionalism to help improve the corporate image of nurses.
She called on nurses to support the leaders to halt the threats to industrial actions as the government worked hard to improve not only their working conditions but the health facilities as well.
The African Co-ordinator of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, Nana Oye Lithur, who chaired the function, urged Ghanaian nurses to keep the flame of Florence Nightingale burning.
She urged them to reflect and think carefully on the values ascribed to nursing and find out whether they had been able to attain the objectives of nursing.