Develop quality assurance systems - Accreditation board charges nurses, midwifery colleges

The National Accreditation Board (NAB) has charged nursing and midwifery colleges across the country to have quality assurance systems in place in order to address deficiencies and improve upon their products and services.

It said health training institutions should have offices or units or committees since they would ensure their proper functioning.

“It is very important, so they need to get quality assurance offices or committees, whichever is more appropriate to that particular institution. They should also have qualified persons to head the quality assurance outfit and put in place, the policies and all the structures that would help them to function well,” the Executive Director of the NAB, Dr Kingsley Narko, said at a day’s training programme for health training institutions in Accra.

The programme was organised by the NAB for the health training institutions to help them to understand the relevance and benefits of quality assurance systems.

Successful

Successful institutions, Dr Nyarko said, thrived on robust quality assurance systems.

“We have observed that there are some issues that we felt needed to be put across so that they would improve upon the services that they provide for the students,” he said.

Dr Nyarko noted that for institutions to make progress and thrive, they required qualified and competent quality assurance professionals.

“One of the things we do as NAB is not only to accredit institutions but also to make sure that their programmes are assured by us and are of certain quality and standards,” he said.

He expressed the hope that there would be some mutual gains at the end of the workshop since both the NAB and them, in addition to the country at large, would benefit.

Concerns

“We would let them know what they have to do right and we would also listen to their concerns and see how we would be able to address those concerns,” he said.

Dr Nyarko said prior to the workshop, there was a meeting with the leadership of the institutions regarding the improvement of their institutions.

Health training institutions, he said, became part of the tertiary education landscape not very long ago, and so they had certain characteristics that did not necessarily conform to the character of education institutions so the NAB thought it wise to engage them.

Core aim

The Chairman of the Quality Assurance Committee of NAB, Prof. K.B.Omane-Antwi, said the core aim of quality assurance at institutional level was to ensure that students had appropriate academic experience while the quality and standards of awards in principle and delivery was assured.

“The institutional staff evaluate their courses and programmes through the process of peer review so as to promote and enhance quality, as well as to stimulate curriculum development and teaching and learning culture/environment in the institution,” he said.

Moreover, he said, the aim was to ensure that national and regulatory standards were met as products were also trained to the level of international benchmarks and standards.