Nurses and midwives demographic shift in Ghana-the policy implications of a looming crisis.

As part of measures to address severe shortage of nurses and midwives, Ghana embarked on massive scale-up of the production of nurses and midwives which has yielded remarkable improvements in nurse staffing levels. It has, however, also resulted in a dramatic demographic shift in the nursing and midwifery workforce in which 71 to 93% of nurses and midwives by 2018 were 35 years or younger, as compared with 2.8 to 44% in 2008. In this commentary, we examine how the drastic generational transition could adversely impact on the quality of nursing care and how the educational advancement needs of the young generation of the nursing and midwifery workforce are not being met. We propose the institution of a national nursing and midwifery mentorship programme and a review of the study leave policy to make it flexible and be based on a comprehensive training needs assessment of the nursing and midwifery workforce. We further advocate that policymakers should also consider upgrading all professional nursing and midwifery programmes to bachelor degrees as this would not only potentially enhance the quality of training but also address the phenomenon of large numbers of nurses and midwives seeking bachelor degree training soon after employment-sometimes putting them at the offending side of organisational policy.

Forecast of Healthcare Facilities and Health Workforce Requirements for the Public Sector in Ghana, 2016-2026.

BACKGROUND: Ghana is implementing activities towards universal health coverage (UHC) as well as the attainment of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the health sector by the year 2030. Aside lack of empirical forecast of the required healthcare facilities to achieve these mandates, health workforce deficits are also a major threat. We therefore modelled the needed healthcare facilities in Ghana and translated it into year-by-year staffing requirements based on established staffing standards. METHODS: Two levels of modelling were used. First, a predictive model based on Markov processes was used to estimate the future healthcare facilities needed in Ghana. Second, the projected healthcare facilities were translated into aggregate staffing requirements using staffing standards developed by Ghana's Ministry of Health (MoH). RESULTS: The forecast shows a need to expand the number/capacity of healthcare facilities in order to attain UHC. All things being equal, the requisite healthcare infrastructure for UHC would be attainable from 2023. The forecast also shows wide variations in staffing-need-availability rate, ranging from 15% to 94% (average being 68%) across the various staff types. Thus, there are serious shortages of staff which are worse amongst specialists. CONCLUSION: Ghana needs to expand and/or increase the number of healthcare facilities to facilitate the attainment of UHC. Also, only about 68% of the health workforce (HWF) requirements are employed and available for service delivery, leaving serious shortages of the essential health professionals. Immediate recruitment of unemployed but qualified health workers is therefore imperative. Also, addressing health worker productivity, equitable distribution of existing workers, and attrition may be the immediate steps to take whilst a long-term commitment to comprehensively address HWF challenges, including recruitments, expansion and streamlining of HWF training, is pursued.