The Medical and Dental Council of Ghana (MDCG) admitted 138 new physicians into the council on Friday, urging them to uphold high professional and ethical standards in their different disciplines.
Gifty Tina Naa Ayeley Mensah, a Deputy Minister of Health, who issued the charge, said that healthcare workers should operate in accordance with society's high esteem for them.
"If not properly controlled, the temptation of specialized knowledge and achievement may lead to swollen egos, inconsiderate behavior, and the loss of one's humanity - the capacity to care," she continued.
Recent media reports on professional carelessness, inappropriate conduct, and unethical behavior by health practitioners, according to Ms Mensah, are entirely unacceptable, considering that as health professionals, we have a responsibility to protect the public.
They took pledges to help individuals in their most vulnerable situations as practitioners.
Commitment
To address this, she added, the MDCG will convene a Policy Launch and Dialogue Session to unveil a variety of policy guidelines prepared in accordance with the ministry's focus on problems of professional and institutional responsibility.
She reaffirmed the government's commitment to expanding healthcare infrastructure through the Agenda 111 initiative in order to guarantee that people have access to high-quality treatment.
"The government will design, procure, construct, equip, and commission 101 district hospitals, six regional hospitals in newly created regions, one regional hospital in the Western Region, two psychiatric hospitals in Kumasi and Tamale, and redevelop the Accra Psychiatric Hospital under the Agenda 111 project," she said.
Technology, posting
In a speech on behalf of the MDCG Chairman, Prof. Margaret Lartey, Dean of the University of Ghana Medical School, asked the newly inducted physicians to accept their posting and abstain from attempting to modify it, adding that they should treat their housemanship as a full-time job.
"The council's attention has been called to the fact that many individuals work part-time in the house." "Some of you apply for full-time academic programs and spend your time at home taking lectures at other universities," she explained.
She also recommended the inductees to expand their technological capacity, citing the growing use of technology internationally and the digitization of numerous operations as examples.
She said that this provided them with a chance to enhance their typing abilities and computer literacy in general, ensuring that patient data entry did not become a barrier to health treatment.
"Electronic does not equal sparse, as several sites have already discovered." "The council wants you to give detailed information on all of your patient interactions," she said.
Inductees
Three dentists were among the 138 recruits, with the rest being general practitioners.
They were graduates of five higher universities around the country, as well as doctors with overseas training.
Accra College of Medicine, University of Cape Coast, School of Medical Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, and Kumasi School of Medicine and Dentistry are among them.