What Ghana needs is a just culture and genuine patient–family engagement.
The recent incident at Ridge Hospital, where a nurse was allegedly assaulted by a patient’s relative, has triggered understandable public outrage.
Health professionals dedicate themselves to service under extremely challenging conditions, and no form of violence against them is acceptable.
At the same time, patients and families who enter hospitals in moments of distress deserve compassion, dignity, and responsiveness.
The swift response of the Minister of Health in visiting the hospital, establishing a committee to investigate the incident, measures to enhance security at the hospital, alongside establishing call centres for the public to report issues bordering on healthcare, deserves commendation.
These actions demonstrate both empathy and urgency, and they provide an important first step in reassuring health workers and the public alike.
Yet, even as we await the committee’s findings, this is also a moment for sober reflection: how do we prevent such incidents from recurring?
Beyond Punishment and Call Centres
Calls for arrests or the creation of call centres to report staff behaviour may have their place, but they are not sufficient on their own.
Punishing relatives may satisfy short-term demands for justice, and call centres may create a new channel for complaints, but neither will address the systemic pressures that fuel mistrust between providers and patients.
The Ridge episode reflects long-standing weaknesses in Ghana’s health system: overstretched facilities, staff shortages, inadequate infrastructure, and communication breakdowns.
Patients often feel neglected; and health workers feel overwhelmed. In such an environment, tensions can escalate quickly.
Need for a just culture
To break this cycle, Ghana must move away from a blame-oriented mindset toward what is known globally as a just culture. A just culture recognises that while individuals (staff) must be accountable for their actions, most incidents of harm, conflict, error or delays are symptoms of flawed systems rather than wilful negligence.
In such an environment, the focus shifts from punishment to learning: how can we redesign our systems, strengthen communication, and build trust to prevent recurrence?
A just culture creates psychological safety for health workers, enabling them to be transparent about difficulties they face without fear of reprisal.
It also creates space for patients and families to voice concerns in ways that are heard, validated, and acted upon constructively.
Patient, family engagement as a cornerstone
Alongside just culture, Ghana must urgently strengthen patient and family engagement in healthcare.
Around the world, research has shown that when patients and their relatives are treated as partners in care, rather than passive recipients or potential adversaries, tensions diminish, and trust grows.
This means establishing structured communication frameworks, training health workers in empathy and conflict resolution, and ensuring that complaint-resolution mechanisms are transparent and dialogue-driven, not punitive.
It means creating avenues for patient voices in hospital governance and quality improvement.
And it requires policy support at the highest level to embed engagement as a cornerstone of health system reform. Establishing a just culture and encouraging patient -family engagement have also been emphasised by the World Health Organization as critical to ensure quality and safety in health systems of its member states.
A moment of opportunity
The committee set up by the Minister of Health has a unique opportunity: not only to clarify the Ridge incident, but also to catalyse wider reform.
Its work could lay the groundwork for embedding just culture and patient–family engagement as pillars of our healthcare system.
Protecting health workers and respecting patients’ rights are not competing goals.
They are two sides of the same coin.
Achieving both requires moving beyond episodic reactions — arrests, hotlines, or inquiries — toward systemic reform that builds trust and prevents conflict at its root.
Conclusion
The Ridge incident has stirred strong emotions, but it must also stir deeper reflection. Ghana’s health system stands at a crossroads.
If we seize this moment, we can move from crisis response to meaningful reform, ensuring that our hospitals are safe for those who care and compassionate for those who seek care.
Professor of Health Policy and Management
University of Ghana Business School
