The Nurses and Midwifery Council (NMC), has for the first time introduced an online licensing examination for midwives as part of efforts to ensure best practices and efficiency in licensing qualified midwives.
A total of 1,073 candidates took part in the maiden edition at 13 examination centres across the country. The examinations ended today, Thursday, March 14.
At the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) centre in the Ashanti Region, 284 candidates wrote the exams.
In all, the candidates answered 180 questions online in each of the three papers simultaneously at all the centres across the nation, under the strict supervision of invigilators.
The on-line examination has replaced the manual to facilitate quick release of results which would happen within ten days of writing the exams, unlike the manual exams which took three months to be released.
Ghana is the third country in Africa after Kenya and South Africa, as well as the first in West Africa to adopt the online examination, to certify nurses and midwives.
Mrs Annie Addoye, the Chief Invigilator at the KNUST centre speaking to the GNA at the centre said, the new system is a significant improvement.
She said the candidates were mainly nurses who had undergone a two-year Nurse Assistant Clinical (NAC) and Nurse Assistant Preventive (NAP). They were enrolled to do diploma in Midwifery, after having worked for three to five years on the field.
Mrs Addoye said since it was a novelty, a mock exercise was conducted to prepare the candidates psychologically by giving them a prior exposure to the computers and the new mode of examination, before the main exams.
She assured that the NMC would improve on the arrangements in subsequent years based on challenges identified.
Source:GNA
