A consultative meeting has been held to finalise discussions on the intended top-up Diploma for Nurse Assistant Clinicals (NAC) and Nurse Assistant  Preventive(NAP) Midwifery programme which has been developed by the University of Cape Coast.

The discussions were aimed at putting in place modalities to ensure that the programme commenced in 2018 without any hindrances on the part of the key stakeholders.

Stakeholders at the meeting comprised Principals of Health Training Institutions running the NAC/NAP programmes, Head, Conference of Health Training Institutions Secretariat, representatives of Ministry of Health and Nursing and Midwifery Council of Ghana.

The UCC team at the meeting were members of the Committee on Institutional Affiliation Office (CIA), Provost of the College of Education Studies, Prof. Eric Magnus Wilmot, Provost, College of Health and Allied Science, Prof. Johnson Nyarko Boampong, Dean of the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Prof. Alex Pappoe and a team of curriculum developers from the School of Nursing and Midwifery

Opening the meeting, the Chairman of the Committee on Institutional Affiliation, Prof. Edward Marfo-Yiadom, assured stakeholders of UCC’s commitment to ensure that the programme was successfully rolled out to upgrade the skills of the teeming holders of the NAC/NAP certificates in the Ghana Health Service. He observed that these category of Nurses were playing critical role in health care delivery in the country, especially in the rural areas. “It is a good initiative by the Ministry of Health to find ways of helping these calibre of Nurses who are equally good as their counterparts with diploma to progress academically,” he noted.

Prof. Marfo-Yiadom said, the meeting would help stakeholders to appreciate efforts the University had made so that they could also make inputs to enable the programme to start later in the year.

It would be recalled that the Ministry of Health (MoH) and Nursing and Midwifery Council (N&MC) in May launched a Top-up Diploma programme for NAC/NAP certificate holders in Accra.   The launching was performed by the Deputy Minister of Health, Ms. Tina Naa Ayaley Mensah.

Participants at the two-day consultative meeting, concluded discussions on the curriculum, sale of forms/admission procedures, capacity building workshop for tutors, access courses, modules and student records management for the programme. Other issues that were discussed were fees to be charged including tuition, accommodation, feeding, registration and examination.