The Secretary of the National Department of Health, Mr. Pascoe Kase issued a press release today to bring the community up to date on the actions which are in place to ensure the ongoing quality of Nursing and Midwifery Services in the country and the steps that individuals need to take to ensure this quality is ongoing.
“The services which Papua New Guineans receive when they access a facility should at all times be delivered by a registered, motivated and respected health care professional. The Government of PNG is committed to ensuring that is the case. It is however very important to ensure that all parts of the system work together to ensure this continues. The National Department of health is working closely with training providers and significant investments are being made to upgrade training facilities across the country. This was necessary to be able to increase the number of health professionals being trained. This was also a principal element of the Departments ‘Workforce Enhancement Plan’ which was now entering its second year of implementation.” The Secretary pointed to a strong program of capital works had delivered much needed improvements in infrastructure. He pointed to upgrades at the Lae School of Nursing, the Mendi School of Nursing, St Barnabas College in Milne Bay and the Pacific Adventist University in NCD as being strong examples of the Governments commitment. Turning to Nursing and Midwifery Services specifically, Mr Kase said that there are three very important roles that the Nursing Council and its valuable staff were required to undertake. These roles were essential in ensuring the delivery of quality Nursing Services, which the community could depend on and trust. The first of these was to ensure that the training facilities were using an approved and accepted curriculum to train students. This is assured by the very important role of review and accreditation of training providers, a role carried out by staff of the Nursing Council. This was an ongoing role which was vital to ensure the supply of qualified nursing/midwifery graduates. The second and related role was in the registration of new nursing midwifery graduates. This was clearly necessary to ensure that graduates were able to apply for and be appointed to nursing positions within the health system. Secretary Kase said he was concerned that some training organisations were offering nurse training programs which were not accredited. He warned that students who graduated from these non-accredited programs would not be registered to practice and would therefore not be qualified for the roles they were seeking. He warned parents and students to be vigilant and to ensure their training provider had Nursing Council Accreditation. Mr Kase said that the final element of guaranteeing a qualified and professional nursing and midwifery workforce was the process of annual registration of Nurses and Midwives. The Secretary noted that it was very important for all nurses to ensure that their registration with the Nursing Council was up to date and that the process of reregistration on a biennial basis was very straightforward and easily accomplished. All documents are available on the National Department of Health website www.health.gov.pg. Mr Kase urged all health practitioners to review their current registration status and if in any doubt of what they should do, they should contact the Nursing Council and Medical Board. “The success of the free primary health care policy would only be made possible if there was a qualified workforce of professionals available to provide the services. Competent training and professional registration were essential parts of the system which ensured this was the case”.
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