Category: Nursing Practice

Nurses play a critical role in providing healthcare services in Ghana and must maintain their professional license in order to continue practicing. This license must be renewed every two years in order to ensure that nurses are meeting the standards of care required by the government. The following is a guide to help nurses understand the process of renewing their license in Ghana.

Eligibility

In order to be eligible for license renewal, a nurse must be in good standing with the Ghana Nurses and Midwives Council (GNMC). This means that the nurse must have no outstanding disciplinary actions or complaints against them and must have completed the required number of continuing education hours.

Requirements

To renew a nursing license in Ghana, the following must be submitted to the GNMC:

1. A completed license renewal application form
2. Proof of completion of continuing education hours
3. Payment of the renewal fee

Continuing Education

Nurses in Ghana are required to complete at least 30 hours of continuing education every two years in order to renew their license. These hours can be earned through various activities such as attending conferences, participating in workshops, or taking online courses. It is important to keep a record of all continuing education activities to demonstrate compliance with the requirement.

Renewal Fee

The fee for renewing a nursing license in Ghana is set by the GNMC and is subject to change. It is important to check the GNMC’s website for the current fee before submitting a renewal application.

Timeline

Nurses must renew their license before it expires in order to continue practicing. Renewal applications must be submitted at least three months prior to the expiration date. Late renewals may result in additional fees or disciplinary action.

Conclusion

Renewing a nursing license in Ghana is an important part of maintaining professional standards and ensuring that nurses are able to provide high-quality care to their patients. By following the steps outlined in this guide, nurses can renew their license efficiently and effectively. If you have any questions or concerns about the renewal process, it is recommended to contact the GNMC for assistance.

Applications are hereby invited from suitably qualified Nurses wishing to undergo the Gastrointestinal Endoscopy Training Course.

1. OBJECTIVE

The course is to encourage interest and specialization of Nurses in Gastrointestinal Endoscopy and enhance Gastrointestinal practices in general.

2. DURATION

The duration of the courses is Three (3) months

3. ENTRY REQUIREMENTS

Applicants must possess at least two (2) years post qualifications experience and must have registered as a General Nurse. Possession of Perioperative Nurses Certificate would be an added advantage.

4. COURSE FEE

The course fee is One Hundred Thousand Naira (N100,000.00) only.

5. NON-RESIDENTIAL

The course is non-residential and individual participants would be responsible for their accommodation.

6. METHOD OF APPLICATION

Applications should be made on the official admission form obtained from Clinical Services and Training Department on payment of non-refundable fee of Ten Thousand Naira (N10,000.00) payable via remita account at any commercial bank. You are to generate R.R.R. Log into Remita Platform and pick OAUTHC Recurrent.

7. CLOSING DATE

Completed application forms duly endorsed by sponsors together with photocopies of relevant certificates/ credential and two (2) self addressed envelopes with N150.00 stamps affixed should be forwarded to the office of The Chairman, Medical Advisory Committee. O.A.U.T.H.C., Ile-Ife not later than Friday 24^th May, 2019.

8. SELECTION

Only shortlisted candidates would be contacted for written and oral interview.

9. COURSE COMMENCEMENT DATE

17^th June, 2019

Bola Alejo (Mrs).,
Director of Administrator,
For: Chief Medical Director

Speaking tips:

-introduce yourself first

-try to be calm as possible. Calculate the time. Look at the recorder (the time is running and you’ll see it).

-if you feel nervous, its ok not to look at the interlocutor. All the time I was having my exam, I was looking at my cue card.

-write on your cue card! Underline, arrow, write cue words on each question as a guide.

-be symphatetic and emphatize.

-ask wether he is following or if everything is clear, let the patient know you will be glad to explain again if needed.

-comfort the patient

-before ending the role play, ask if there is any other concern you didnt address so u can address it

*if you do not know a particular diagnosis or not sure about the treatment, just invent. Take note that the exam is about English and not about your medical knowledge.

 

But take note that your recording is what’s being graded. There is no camera to tell you you did not maintain eye contact with the patient. If looking at the interlocutor will make you jitter and nervous, better avoid it. A glance once inawhile would be enough.

 

Also go through speaking tasks in the site or book, also listen to BBC health, could guide you on how to speak English well also watch role play videos of oet

Definition
Any Substance (i.e. drugs, food or hormones) or strategies (e.g. oral care) that can be used to stimulate appetite in order to increase eating desire in anyone.

Appetite is the desire to eat food, sometimes due to hunger. Appealing foods can stimulate appetite even when hunger is absent, although appetite can be greatly reduced by satiety. Appetite exists in all higher life-forms, and serves to regulate adequate energy intake to maintain metabolic needs. It is regulated by a close interplay between the type of food, digestive tract and the brain. Appetite has a relationship with every individual’s behavior.

A loss of appetite occurs when you have a low desire to eat. Different factors can cause poor appetite, including mental and physical illness. If your lack of appetite last more than a couple of days, it can cause weight loss or malnutrition. Not having appetite can befrustrating for any one especially people who are underweight and trying to gain weight or build mass.

Causes
There are various causes that may lead to decrease appetite and subsequently lead to unwanted weight loss
i. Medical conditions (e.g. common malaria, gastritis and stomatitis and so on)
ii. Psychological and psychiatric disorders (e.g. anxiety and depression)
iii. Eating disorders (e.g. anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa)
iv. Alcoholism
v. Prematurity
vi. Congenital malformation (e.g. clef plate)
vii. Old age
viii. Pharmacological agent (e.g. digoxin hydralazine)
ix. Visual influence.

Sign and symptoms
Patient with decrease in appetite usually present the following signs and symptoms:
Nausea and vomiting
Regurgitation and rumination
Lump in the throat
Psychological disturbance
Fatigue
Anxious
Anemia
Dehydration
Electrolyte imbalance (e.g. hypocalcaemia and hypocalcaemia)

Nursing management
Assess patient general conditions and re assure patient before and during meal
Give patient oral toilet before and after meal
Provide privacy and allow patient to eat in confortable place needed
Give light exercise for 10-15 minute before eating this help to improve appetite
Administer prescribe appetite stimulant that help in stimulating patient appetite
Avoid any food or beverages that has no over powering smell
Provide patient with different choice of menu
Make food a pleasant experience allow patient to eat in attractive setting, playing his favorite music
Provide patients with snacks between meal and bed time choose food high in calorie and protein
Prove patient with small and frequent food
Continue to re assure patient allay his fear and anxiety.

Education on patient on discharge
i. Advice patient to eat nutrient rich foods
iii. Advice patient to add more calories to his meal
iv. Advice patientmake meal time an enjoyable and social activity
v. patient should learn on how to schedule meal time
vi. Advice patient not to skip breakfast
vii. Eat less fiber
viii. Eat more of your favorite food

Nursing diagnoses in patient with a decrease appetite
Anxiety related to decrease appetite
Risk for unstable blood glucose level
Risk for metabolic imbalance syndrome
Risk for imbalance fluid volume
Nursing intervention
Anxiety related to decrease appetite
Re-assure patient
Stay with patient to allay fear and anxiety during eating
Make meal time a joy able one
Risk for unstable blood glucose level
Provide oral care
Encourage patient to eat high calorie diet
Encourage patient on frequent food intake
Measure patient blood glucose level
Risk for imbalance fluid volume
Give fluid between diet and after dietary intake
Administer calorie rich fluid
Monitor input and output balance
Patient out come
Patient is free from anxiety
Patient fluid volume is restored
Patient nutritional status is stable

By Nurse Ibrahim Isah Musa RN, HND NS, BNSc

Procedure of Bed Making: Hospital Bed Making Steps

The bed is the most important and essential piece of furniture in the ward. It is the most noticeable to one entering the ward and is the one which, perhaps, concerns the patient most, and upon which his comfort largely depends, as he spends most of his time in it. It also perhaps concerns the nurse most, as the greatest part of her work is around, and with the bed. Its appearance can make or mar the whole appearance of the ward. The manner in which it is made can make or mar the patient’s comfort, and therefore hasten or delay his recovery.

The standard hospital bed is a single bed, six feet and six inches long, three feet wide, and twenty-six inches from the floor, made of steel or enameled iron tubing which does not harbor bedbugs. It is simple, free from decoration, knobs or angles, light, easily moved, convenient to handle, easily cleansed and disinfected, an possesses strength and durability. The height and size while not always comfortable to the patient are convenient to the nurse and doctor in the care of the patient. The castors are made of hard rubber or hard rubber tire, and are an important factor in moving the bed without jarring the patient. The springs are usually the national or woven wire which are the most durable and sanitary.

Why are Nurses Important?

What would a hospital be without its nurses? Not only are they responsible for a patient’s medical wellbeing, they are also round-the-clock caregivers that attend to the mental and emotional health of their patients, and those patients’ family members as well. You can ask almost anyone, and they will tell you about especially attentive nurses who went above and beyond to make their hospital stay a million times better. Now, a new study shows something most patients already know: nurses are essential to the success of a hospital. Without them, patients suffer.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, knowing that nurses could make or break a hospital, sought to study what kind of effects a bigger, happier nursing staff had on the proceedings of a hospital. In order to do this, they looked to the Kaiser Permanente health care system, a health network present in eight states that integrates hospitals, insurance, and doctors’ offices into one system. Kaiser is known to be an exemplary health care organization that many other hospitals have tried to replicate, but with little success. Researchers believe this is most likely due to one key difference: its nurses.

When conducting their study, researchers from UPenn looked at 550 hospitals in California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida, including 25 Kaiser Permanente hospitals in California and 56 Magnet hospitals. Magnet hospitals are also known as exemplary health care systems, recognized by the American Nurses Credentialing Center as a great place for nurses to work.

Researchers then administered a survey to nurses, asking them about their work environment, level of education, job satisfaction, and the typical number of patients they see each day. In addition to this, they checked mortality data from each hospital.

“It turns out that, by and large, nursing differences accounted for much of the mortality difference that we saw in Kaiser Permanente hospitals,” Matthew McHugh, a registered nurse and professor at UPenn’s School of Nursing told Yahoo.

Interestingly enough, mortality rates decreased by as much as 20 percent in Kaiser and Magnet hospitals compared to their opponents, and the nursing staff made for “a sizeable portion of the advantage,” the study said.

“It turns out that these differences we see in nursing, in terms of work environment, staffing levels, investment in nursing around a highly educated workforce, those things translate to better outcomes,” McHugh said.

McHugh and his team found that there were a few differences that accounted for this result. The first was that nurses who claimed they enjoyed their work environments were also better at taking care of patients. “We find that places where nurses have a good experience working are places where nurses are better able to do their jobs,” McHugh said. “They’re more autonomous, they’re supported by management, and they’re integrated into hospital decision making.”

Empowering nurses is also essential to creating a better working environment; nurses need to be taken seriously, and feel comfortable telling a physician when something is being handled incorrectly. If nurses are also given the opportunity to make more decisions, patients can receive faster and higher quality care. A study published last year in the Journal of Nursing Administration found that when nurses have more authority within their units, those units report having more effective patient care.

Another way to empower nurses is to show a willingness to make tangible changes that will make their jobs easier. For instance, during the nursing shortage of the early 2000s, Kaiser Permanente worked to make its hospitals cater to the needs of its nursing staff. After investing in research efforts regarding nursing, Kaiser found in studies conducted in both 2005 and 2006 that nurses spent 35 percent of their time documenting patient records. In order to reduce this, Kaiser switched to an electronics-based system for medical records in 2005. It also found that nurses spent a fair amount of time searching for equipment and information, like whether or not a patient’s medication was ready. So it responded by giving nurses electronic notifications for when medications are ready for pick-up.

“We wanted to make sure that we were a place that nurses wanted to work,” said registered nurse Marilyn Chow, vice president of Patient Care Services and Innovation for Kaiser Permanente. “If you have nurses who are happy and joyful at work, they will definitely pass that on and be caring and compassionate.”

Researchers also found that Kaiser and Magnet hospitals were hiring more nurses with Bachelor’s degrees. According to Chow, the nursing field is more complex and demanding than it ever has been before. “The role is not only surveillance, but facilitating and coordinating the care, and not just for one patient, but for four to five patients,” Chow said. “There are so many things to take care of.”

Chow and McHugh also noted that many patients are arriving at hospitals in worse conditions, but leaving hospitals more quickly. Because the length of their stay is shortened, there is more pressure on nurses to spend enough time with patients and their families in order to teach them how to care for themselves when they arrive home.

“Hospitals are very complex, and integrating all of that information requires a certain set of skills and requires you have a pool of knowledge within the overall nursing staff,” McHugh said. When nurses were less educated, the study noted, there were more mistakes being made.

Finally, the study found that the more nurses there are, the better. Kaiser Permanente hospitals are known to have four patients for every one nurse, while non-Magnet hospitals have about a five to one ratio. Quite simply, when there are more nurses, there are more people to care for patients, and those patients receive more personalized, specified attention.

“Nurses are at the bedside and are working with all the other providers,” McHugh explained. “They’re the essential person for monitoring patient condition, and if something bad does happen, intervening and mobilizing the intervention response.”

So, when it comes down to it, a happy hospital means happy nurses. Nurses have always been the lifeblood of hospitals; now, there’s just a study to prove it.

Source: McHugh M, Aiken L, Burns L, et al. Achieving Kaiser Permanente quality. Healthcare Manage Rev. 2015.

Read E, Laschinger H, Finegan J, et al. The influence of nursing unit empowerment and social capital on unit effectiveness and nurse perceptions of patient care quality. Journal of Nursing Administration. 2015.