The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NM&C) on Thursday held a close-out conference for its online licensing examination (NICHE/GHA/261) project after four years of successful implementation.

The NICHE GHANA 261 Project, which started in 2016 with funding from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, improved the organizational capacity of the Nursing and Midwifery Council to conduct efficient, effective and credible licensing examinations for nurse assistants, nurses and midwives.

In 2018, the Council started its first online licensing examination for the Registered Mental Health Nurses (RMN) candidates and has since progressed to rolling up the online licensing examination for all the nursing and midwifery programmes in Ghana.

Mr Kwaku Agyemang-Manu, the Minister of Health, at the conference in Accra, said the project had positioned Ghana as the first in Africa to conduct online licensing examination for nurses and midwives.

“Gradually, Ghana’s stringent nursing and midwifery regulatory system continues to earn global applause because more countries continue to send delegates to understudy the operations of the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Ghana,”  he said.

The Health Minister said E-learning in nursing and midwifery education was a means to an end, rather than the end in itself, hence utilising e-learning could result in greater educational opportunities for students while simultaneously enhancing faculty effectiveness and efficiency.

He said the potential of e-learning, however, assumed a certain level of institutional readiness in human and infrastructural resources, which ensured the alignment of new tools to the educational and economic context.

Mr Agyemang-Manu said the Government would continuously upgrade its medical, nursing and midwifery curricula and train young doctors, nurses, midwives and other health care professionals in a world class fashion.

He lauded all those who had worked hard to make the project a success, especially the Netherlands Government, Nuffic, the Project Team from CINOP, KNUST, Times-End "C" and N&MC and urged them to provide stronger leadership and sustainability plan for the continuation of the project.

Mr Felix Nyante, the Registrar of the NM&C, said prior to the introduction of the project, the Council conducted paper examinations, where examination papers were transported in huge bags to and from the examination centres.

He said the introduction of the online examinations had reduced the cost of conducting the exam and the days for the release of the results from 70 working days to 20.

Mr Nyante said the online licensing examination was not the only tangible outcome of the NICHE GHANA 261 Project, and that throughout the project, 48 Staff of the Council had also benefited from capacity building in higher education.