Nursing and midwifery educators in Ghana say the country’s new competency-based curriculum will not achieve its purpose without major investment in skills laboratories and other teaching facilities.
The warning was issued at the 2026 Annual General Meeting and Scientific Session of the Nurse and Midwife Educators’ Society in Takoradi. The event was held under the theme: “Transforming Nursing and Midwifery Education: The Role of the Nurse and Midwife Educator in Developing and Delivering Competency-Based Curriculum.”
The Nursing and Midwifery Council introduced the revised curriculum to training institutions nationwide in February 2026. It is intended to move education beyond classroom theory by requiring students to demonstrate practical clinical competence.
Professor Augustine Ocloo, Deputy Director-General of the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC), said many institutions did not have adequate facilities to help students develop the confidence required in professional practice.
“We cannot expect students to demonstrate professional confidence when the facilities required to develop that confidence are inadequate,” he said.
He called on institutions and other stakeholders to focus on “the expansion, modernization, and regular resourcing of skills laboratories to provide students with meaningful hands-on learning experiences.”
Professor Ocloo said simulation-based training had become increasingly important in nursing and midwifery education because it helps students connect theoretical knowledge with clinical practice. However, he acknowledged that Ghana was not performing well in providing such opportunities.
“It’s an area that we are doing woefully badly,” he said.
He said simulation facilities enabled students to sharpen their clinical judgement, rehearse emergency procedures, improve communication and promote patient safety without placing patients at avoidable risk.
Aloysius Ali Angliengmene, National Chairman of the Society, said effective implementation of the curriculum was in the interest of the entire public. He noted that educators and healthcare professionals would eventually depend on the same trainees when they themselves became patients.
“How would we want them to take care of us?” he asked.
“So let’s put in the best we can to ensure that the competency-based curriculum introduced by the Nursing and Midwifery Council is not merely a document, a book, or a sheet, but is going to be translated to ensure that what is sought to be achieved would be achieved.”
Government investment
Tony Goodman, Head of Health Training Institutions, said the government had invested more than five million Ghana cedis in modern skills laboratories at selected schools and hospitals, with further work continuing.
He said basic and specialist skills laboratories were being established at Tamale Teaching Hospital, Kumasi Nursing and Midwifery Training College and Korle Bu Nursing and Midwifery Training College. The facilities are being equipped with modern equipment.
Mr Goodman added that skills laboratory equipment had also been supplied to KNUST and Korle Bu because of their strength in midwifery training.
The Ministry of Health, he said, recognised that students should practise procedures in skills laboratories before working with real patients.
“It is better to take the person through the skills lab in the hospital before touching a human being,” he said, adding that the policy was introduced “to make sure that all of us, our lives are safe.”
By Abraham Mensah
