Nurses and midwives in the country need higher education in order to enhance healthcare delivery at various health facilities.

This is according to the Principal for the Peri-Operative and Critical Nursing School, Dr. Kwaku Asante-Krobea, will ultimately promote the dignity of the healthcare profession as patients will be in safer hands.

“I will never drop my conviction that patients are always safer in the hands of a highly educated nurse and midwife and so we should continue to aim at and press for higher professional and academic identity to address this need,” Dr. Asante disclosed.

Dr. Kwaku Asante-Krobea made this call during the launch of the 20th Anniversary celebrations of the School of Peri-Operative and Critical Nursing in Accra on Tuesday.

“The nursing certificate and diploma, now the most popular route to becoming a nurse and midwife, must all be phased out to strengthen my conviction that a nurse and midwife should be difficult to become and with the acquisition of higher education and more competent skills,” he reiterated.

Dr. Kwaku Asante-Krobea also called on the government to address the high need for Peri-Operative and Critical nurses in the country.

“In Ghana, we are still struggling to provide patients with safer and adequate Peri-Operative Nursing care, a situation which is counter-productive to sound surgical outcomes because every five surgical clients need one Peri-Operative Nurse and every one or two critical-ill clients need a Critical Care Nurse,” he explained.

Peri-Operative and Critical Care Nurses promote quality service and care delivery in the operating theatres and intensive care units of health facilities.

He noted that the only public Peri-Operative and Critical Nursing School in the country though has seen some level of development still need infrastructural development.

In pointing out some of the challenges of the school the Principal said “it is not just the administration and management of the institution since its establishment that has been the challenging amidst various constraints.”

“The increased intake of students, lack of logistic support and challenges of recruitment of specialized academic and professional human resource personnel have taken its toll on our resolve to achieve distinction,” he added.

The launch was used honour some individuals who have over the last 20 years supported the school in various ways.

The launch of the anniversary was preceded by a health screening exercise held at Glefe a suburb of Dansoman in the Greater Accra Region, where hundreds of residents in the area were screened for various sicknesses and diseases.