After twenty years of operating as a department in the College of Health Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, the nursing and midwifery department has been elevated to a school.

The School of Nursing and Midwifery, then the Department of Nursing has churned out hundreds of professional nurses and midwives over the past 20 years.

Acting dean of the school, Prof. Veronica Millicent Dzomeku expressed that the school is going to run some new programs in the new academic year. She observed that higher education for nurses and midwives in the country is very limited.

“As a school of nursing and midwifery we have been a department of nursing for 20 years. During this period, we have introduced new programs like BSC Midwifery, BSc Practical Care and BSc Public Nursing and a postgraduate program in nursing.

“Now we are looking forward to starting an MPhil Programme in midwifery, PhD in midwifery and PhD in nursing. In fact, we are going to start with the PhD in nursing next academic year,” she said.

“Nursing and midwifery education only started in the University of Ghana and it took a long time for KNUST to initiate the study.

“So that means that higher education in nursing and midwifery have been very limited so in the same vein attracting faculty with higher degrees in Ghana has been a problem.

“Until recently a master's in nursing and midwifery were not available in the country so anybody who attained had to go out of the country,” she said.

Vice Chancellor of the University of Health and Allied Sciences, Prof Lydia Aziato encouraged the school to equip students with the needed skill to boost the country’s healthcare delivery.

“Please make every effort to ensure that the students that are graduating are safe nurses and midwives.

“All of us can be patients one day and that person you graduated who was not skilled will be the one taking care of you,” she said.

She also emphasized the need for nurses to be taught how to be empathetic.

"The nurse can be very intelligent, they can get the concept, they can be rational, excellent and very skilled but if you don’t communicate well and you don’t approach situations well to meet the emotional needs of your patients, please for me it’s a zero.

“So, our training of nurse sand midwives across the universities not only KNUST must remember that they are concept is a human discipline. Apart from the technical we need to also handle the emotional, social and psychological aspects,” she said.

The provost of the College of Health Sciences, Prof Christian Agyare thanked the government and the management of the school for making the inauguration a reality.