Assessing the Current Curriculum of the Nursing and Midwifery Informatics Course at All Nursing and Midwifery Institutions in Ghana

Abstract

The use of computers in the delivery of health care has significantly improved the way health service is delivered to clients and patients in the world. Despite the importance of computing to the delivery of health service, developing countries have not greatly benefited from it. Nursing informatics has been in existence and part of academic curriculum for the past 2 decades in some advanced countries. The Ghana Nursing and Midwifery Council introduced the nursing and midwifery informatics course during the 2015/2016 academic year. This seeks to train student nurses on the relevance of computers to health care. Two separate workshops were organised to ascertain the preparedness of tutors (teachers at the nursing and midwifery training institutions) for teaching the new nursing and midwifery informatics course as well as to compare the curriculum with other international recommendations. The nursing and midwifery informatics course is taught at the first year where students have not been introduced to the nursing processes for them to appreciate the use of nursing informatics skills. It would be better if the nursing and midwifery informatics course is rather introduced during the second year second semester when students are about going for the hands-on training at the various health care institutions. Examining the course content reveals that the practical aspect within the course is very small. It is expected that more practical contents will be introduced. Tutors are not adequately prepared to teach this new course. More training is therefore needed to make tutors fully prepared to teach both the theory and practical aspects of the nursing and midwifery informatics course. It is expected that the nursing and midwifery informatics course would prepare student nurses on all nursing informatics competencies. It is essential that nurse educators incorporate the entire concept of informatics into the education of nurses.