The Nursing and Midwifery Council has inducted 4,000 Nurse Assistants, Nurses and Midwives in the Northern Zone who qualified into the Nursing profession in the year 2016, to practice as professionals.

The 2017 induction ceremonies for the over 18,000 Nurse Assistants, Nurses and Midwives who qualified in 2016 across the Regions in Ghana have been zoned into four groups.

The group consisting of Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions was conducted in Bolgatanga, the Regional Capital of the Upper East.

Inducting the Nurses into the profession, the Registrar of the Council, Mr Felix Nyante, urged them to abide by their job description, legal and ethical responsibilities.

The Registrar who also urged them to use the laid down channels in addressing their grievances instead of resorting to demonstrations and strikes.

Dr Vida Yakong, the Head of the Department of Midwifery at the University for Development Studies, expressed regret that in spite the wealth of knowledge, skills and attitudes acquired by the Nurses at the health training institutions, majority of them did not put them into use to help improve upon the health status of clients.

She attributed the problem to lack of equipment, supplies and heavy work load among others.

“Nurses dispense comfort, compassion and caring without even a prescription. So you realize that it does not matter the type of qualification that you have but what matters is that our main focus remains the same”, Dr Yakong said.

She said although the expectations of the profession were huge, Nurses should let the core values of their profession, which calls for serving humanity to be their binding principle.

Mr Rockson Bukari, the Upper East Regional Minister, commended the Council for setting the quality standards and ethics for compliance by its members and indicated that it was helping to improve the quality of health delivery in many health facilities in the country.

Whilst calling on the Council to crack the whip on those who would want to breach the regulations and the good practice of nursing instituted by the Council, the Regional Minister entreated the inductees to be committed to their duties to avoid being sanctioned.

He said the restoration of the Nurses allowances by the government re-affirms that it attached much importance to the health sector and would do more to help improve upon it.

“Government is collaborating with the relevant stakeholders to improve upon motivating health staff. Our commitment to restoring the earlier arrangement of facilitating the acquisition of vehicles for staff is on course and the implementation of the revised CHPS strategy will also make adequate accommodation and other facilities available to enhance the work of staff at that level of health delivery”, the Minister said.