A Former President of the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA), Mrs Alice Darkoa Asare-Allotey, has urged nurses and midwives to read professional materials to enhance quality service delivery.

“We should read to enhance our knowledge and take control of the nursing practice. The ward belongs to us, we manage the ward, so when managing the ward, we need to be abreast with the profession and not allow none nurses to dictate to us,” she said.

Mrs Asare-Allotey, who was the seventh President of the GRNMA, said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Accra.

According to her, nurses were versatile professionals in the health care delivery system with knowledge of all sectors within the clinical settings of healthcare facilities across the country.

“We have expanded roles, so when they are going to negotiate, for salaries they should take all these into consideration because we as nurses can go into the job areas of Doctors or Pharmacists, but they cannot come into our job area,” Mrs Asare-Allotey said.

She entreated nurses and midwives to pursue education to the highest level, adding “Even if you get your masters or doctorate, you can still perform bedside nursing and conduct research works in the nursing profession to impact positively in the health delivery system.”

Touching on the attitude of the current generation of nurses and midwives, the retired nurse bemoaned the laid-back behaviour of some nurses at health facilities and urged them to strictly abide by the code of ethics of the profession.

She said “The profession you have chosen has ethics and code of conduct, so make sure that you work within that confinement so that God will bless you. I am retired, but I have joy in my heart that I have served well.”

Mrs Asare-Allotey explained that such blessings from God were not in monetary forms, but in the form of good health, peace, protection from God and opened opportunities for children while in active service or on retirement.

The former GRNMA President expressed worry about the behaviour of some young people in nursing uniform suspected to be nurses who misbehave on social media, “Our uniform is our pride. Once you put on the uniform, you have put on the profession.”

“It is not out of order that they prescribed the style, the length and how the uniform should be. It makes you embodied in the profession, our dressing on the ward should be a form of healing to patients.”

“Dress decently, so that when patients see you, they will appreciate that they are in safe hands,” she advised.