Prof. Rita Akosua Dickson, vice chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah institution of Science and Technology (KNUST), has allayed the concerns of the administration of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) that the institution will continue to collaborate with the hospital in the education of medical personnel.
The university has revealed plans to establish a teaching hospital to train its students in medicine and health sciences, raising concerns about a potential severing of training links with the KATH.
The Vice-Chancellor gave the management the reassurance that the university would continue to work with KATH and retain their current connection in order to train top-tier medical and health sciences professionals.
Prof. Dickson remarked that the university's decades-long cooperation with KATH "has contributed to generate professionals in the health sciences who are having considerable impact on the global arena" in a statement released by the public affairs director of KATH, Kwame Frimpong.
When Prof. Otchere Addai-Mensah, the Chief Executive Officer of KATH, paid Prof. Dickson a courtesy call to officially introduce himself to the institution after taking office late last year, the Vice-Chancellor of KNUST made this known.
In order to continue producing some of the best minds in the field of medicine and health sciences for the nation and the world, Prof. Dickson said that KATH and the university needed to continually deepen their collaboration. KATH had been helping university students for years to successfully marry theory and practise, he said.
Prof. Dickson outlined how KATH would continue to be extremely relevant to the university's training mandate even with the establishment of additional teaching sites and the eventual completion of its teaching hospital due to the significant increase in the intake of students, including those in the clinical programmes.
In order to produce top-notch healthcare professionals, "we have no intentions to change our collaboration with KATH," she insisted. "We are dedicated to expanding this extremely significant bond in the years ahead."
As in all interactions, Prof. Dickson acknowledged that there can occasionally be conflicts between the two institutions, but he stressed the need of using conversation to settle disagreements so that both parties can support one another in carrying out their respective missions.
According to Prof. Addai-Mensah, because KATH serves as the university's teaching hospital, the two institutions are inextricably bound together, leaving them with little choice but to strengthen their current partnerships.
He regretted that there had occasionally been tensions between the hospital administration and the Senior Specialists and Consultants from the university's School of Medicine and Dentistry who worked at the hospital. This, he claimed, was impeding the provision of high-quality specialist services to patients.
Prof. Addai-Mensah stated, "Soon after taking over, I met with the parties involved to settle all the issues and to give my word that there would be equality and fairness in regard to appointments and payment of allowances, regardless of whether one was a KNUST or KATH staff member.
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