The National Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and Burns Centre (NRPSBC) has taken a bold step to save the country thousands of cedis that go into the training of Plastic Surgery and Burns nurses abroad.
Forty of such nurses from selected hospitals across the country graduated with Postgraduate Diploma certificate in Plastic Surgery and Burns Nursing in Accra last Thursday, saving the country between $ 25,000 and $30,000 which would have been spent on training each nurse abroad.
The one-year programme which was offered to qualified beneficiaries for free was organised by the NRPSBC in collaboration with Resurge Africa to enable surgeons in Ghana to have their complement nurses.
At the graduation ceremony, the Director of NRPSBC and Head of Faculty for Accra, Dr Opoku Ware Ampomah, said there was the need to train nurses in Plastic Surgery and Burns Nursing to complement the work of surgeons, since the department only trained doctors for the programme.
According to him, the department had been in existence for over 20 years but did not have a programme for training postgraduate nurses in reconstructive plastic surgery and burns care.
It, therefore, had to create a programme for the nurses to acquire knowledge on plastic surgery and burns nursing to support surgeons in the field.
Challenges
Dr Ampomah said some of the challenges they faced were lack of manpower, logistics and infrastructure, adding, ‘’in this maiden programme we did not limit it to only Accra but across the country because we knew that accidents did not choose location but it occurred anywhere and we did not want to look at one place while developing a human resource facility.”
Resurge Africa
The Director of Resurge Africa and a doctor at the Canniesburn Plastic Surgery Unit, Glasgow, Dr Stuart Watson, urged the nurses to carry their experience to other nurses and excel in practising the profession.
He stated that the programme would run for two years, and advised patients, doctors and nurses on preventive measures and treatment processes.
He stated that the team would organise other programmes that would also benefit other nurses in Ghana.
“We are going to run this programme again in the next two years so that another batch of nurses can enter into the programme and I am hoping that many of the nurses we trained here can come back and teach on the programme, in future. It will be fully accredited and then it can run after every year.”
MoH
The Deputy Director of Administration at the Ministry of Health, (MoH) Mr Dela Kemevor, asked the team for accreditation for the programme since it was helpful to surgical expertise, nurses and the public.
“Accreditation needs urgent and speedy attention and we are counting on you for that. We hope that you would put this into consideration,” he said.
He advised the trainees to excel in the profession while they built on their customer care.
He said he believed that customer care was very important in health delivery and, therefore, the need to encourage the graduands on customer care.
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