Some nurse educators in the country are calling on political figures and parents to stop pushing people into the nursing profession because there are no jobs.

According to them, the long list of protocols from political figures and pressure from parents for their children to pursue nursing at all costs are raising nurses who have no passion for the nursing profession.

The nurse educators say the nursing profession is having some negative reviews lately and this is a departure from the days of old where people that had real passion for the job were admitted.

Speaking at the International Nurses Day lecture series in Cape Coast to examine what’s disrupting the transformation of the nursing profession and how to carve a new image for the profession, the nurse educators intimated the image of the profession could be salvaged if people that have passion for the nursing profession were allowed into the training schools.

A former Principal of the Cape Coast Nurses and Midwifery College of Health, Victoria Brown, intimated, “During my time, it wasn’t like that but these days, what I hear is that the principals are really under stress trying to satisfy all these protocols, but the problem is, some of the candidates are not prepared to do nursing. They don’t have the call; they don’t have the ability to be nurses.”

She advised parents and politicians not to see nursing as the only way to push the youth who want jobs but rather counsel them to follow careers, they are passionate about.

She also recounted how career counseling sessions that were done at the Senior High Schools steered students towards making career choices that fitted their passion.

“We should not force them because nursing requires some skills that would go with it. Most of the time, after going through the program, they can’t give proper nursing care because they don’t like the job; probably their parents forced them into it, or they only wanted a profession that immediately after training they could get a job,” she stated.

Dr. Evelyn Asamoah Ampofo of the School of Nursing at the University believes there’s the need to change the narrative about the nursing profession.

She stated, the image of the nursing profession needed to change a little bit because the narratives out there about nurses haven’t been so good.

“As we celebrate this day- the International Nurses Day- we want the nurses and midwives to know that they do so much to help in achieving the universal health coverage agenda and it’s unfortunate that sometimes, the negative narrations are more than the positive things that they do. So, we just want nurses to be conscious of that, especially when it comes to attitudes,” she ended.