Retrain health workers for efficiency

Latest research conducted by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and its stakeholders in health has blamed low productivity by healthcare providers on outdated curricula.

According to Dr. Charles Ameh of the Centre for Maternal and Newborn Health, infant and maternal mortality rates will fall if health care providers are consistently trained with modern methodologies.

Dr. Ameh said there was a statistically significant difference in the improvement of scores recorded by health care providers, who had six years or more post-school training, compared to those, who had less than two years post-school training.

“The longer you stay post-graduate without any refresher training, the more difficult it is for you to be retrained and improve even after that training,” he told Class News.

He said the Ghana Health Service may have a problem with pre-service training, which is why having an intervention only at the in-service training level is not good enough. “At pre-service, how are doctors and midwives being trained?” he questioned.

“Are we using the most up-to-date curriculum, the most up to date teaching and learning methodologies and strategies?”

According to him, there is the need to look at the issue of years of experience and training.

In his view, the GHS and its stakeholders in the health service should not wait too long to retrain people, “we should aim to retrain people in the first three years of graduation.”