GHANA COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS Our Ref: GCPS/E &T/ACC/2015 Tel: 0302-238650, 238703 Fax: 0302256727 E-mail: info@ghcps.org P. O. Box MB 429 Ministries-Accra Ghana GHANA COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS and SURGEONS Annual General and Scientific Meeting (AGSM) 2014 Opening Ceremony 10 th December 2014 Address by Rector, Professor David Ofori-Adjei H.E. Mr Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, Vice-President, Republic of Ghana The Honourable Minister for Health The Ag. Chairperson of Council, Professor Anyetei Lassey The Ag. President of the College, Professor Sir Joseph Akyeampong College Lecturer, Dr George Oduro, FGCS Distinguished invited guests Fellows and Members Ladies and Gentlemen Welcome Once again I am thrilled that you have found time to join us at the Opening Ceremony of the 11 th Annual General and Scientific Meeting. It is with profound pleasure and honour that I address you this morning. I am particularly excited that HE the Vice-President accepted our invitation to honour this occasion at first request an ace in the golfing language.
It is a pleasure to welcome our Honourable Minister for Health to his first official College function. It is also a pleasure for me to welcome the Executives of our sister Colleges in the West African sub-region. It has been our tradition that a College Lecture on the theme of our Annual General and Scientific Meeting is delivered as part of the Opening Ceremony. This year s theme is Improving Emergency Care in Ghana. A hearty welcome to Dr George Oduro, Chairman of our Faculty of Emergency Medicine, this year s College Lecturer. Purpose This morning s function offers the Rector an opportunity to report on the state of the College since the last AGSM. It also provides for the established tradition of admitting deserving individuals as Members and Fellows of the College. These individuals have successfully completed their training and satisfied their examiners in the various faculties of the College as Members and Fellows; as well as those nominated by their peers in the College as eligible for election as Fellows of the College. To the new Fellows and Members it is my expectation that you will carry out your professional responsibilities such as to enhance the image of the College and abide by the tenets of the pledge you will take later during this function. It is expected that you will maintain professionalism, ethical behaviour and remain credible at all times. In particular we expect that you will actively participate in the training programmes of the College; and ensure that you continue developing your professional knowledge and skills. Very soon patients will enter consulting rooms holding laptop computers, tablets or smart phones in a bid to seek real time second opinion from the Internet as they consult you. You should be ready to help them out! Specialists Training The College continues to discharge its mandate and has made significant contribution to the medical specialist manpower needs of the country. The College since its inception has enrolled 1151 residents into Membership training and 240 into Fellowship training. In the current academic year we have enrolled 133 individuals into
membership training and 50 into fellowship training. In general, we are seeing an upward trend in our enrolment. The cumulative number of Members and Fellows trained, as at September 2014, is 522 and 21 respectively. The average pass rate at membership is 67.6%; and 80% for the fellowship examinations. You will find the details in the brochure. We safely return all the successful residents to their employers for posting. The majority are with the Ghana Health Service. There are, however, serious concerns that require consideration: Missed Opportunity: The enrolment figures (133 for membership training for 2014) vis a vis the increasing number of medical school graduates (from local and foreign institutions), estimated to be in excess of 300 in 2011 means that about 57% of doctors will have limited chance of entry into postgraduate medical training in 2014; in addition to those already in the wilderness. By our modest estimation, over a period of five years there will be about 1,000 doctors that have missed an opportunity for residency training. We should recognise the fact that postgraduate medical education is necessary and adds value to undergraduate medical education. Postgraduate medical education also contributes to meeting the human resource for health needs of the country. Overconcentration: There is overconcentration of residents and specialists in the teaching hospitals (particularly Korle Bu and Komfo Anokye) constraining the availability of medical officers and specialists in the regional and district health facilities. This situation is partly due to lack of training centres; and the failure to post doctors out of the teaching hospitals after residency programmes. The response of the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons is to proactively seek to accredit health facilities in the regions for postgraduate medical training. The Academic Board has recently approved a modular training programme in Family Medicine that will keep doctors at their place of work while undergoing training for our membership qualification in Family Medicine. This modular programme will be additional to our regular residency in Family Medicine.
The success of this approach will inform the introduction of similar programmes in the key specialties Medicine, Surgery, Child Health and Obstetric and Gynaecology. We will also have to plan for the training of specialists in critical disciplines to support the work of core specialties in the regions and districts. Such critical disciplines include Anaesthesia, Emergency Medicine, Laboratory Medicine and Psychiatry. In the meantime more training centres are being accredited in the new teaching hospitals (Tamale, Cape Coast) and also the 37 Military Hospital. We have noticed an obvious disconnect between output of members and enrolment for fellowship training. Fewer members are enrolling for senior residency training. A contributory factor may be the condition for residents to do a year s service before starting their senior residency training. The College in its guidelines advocates for a straight training programme through to the Fellowship. This observed disconnect has the potential of adversely affecting our planned extension of training to the regional and district levels; as our trainers are expected to be Fellows and we need to improve on their numbers. Locating Fellows in the regional and district hospitals will also contribute to the decongestion of the teaching hospitals as training centres; and provide expert services closer to the communities. We need to debate this situation. Ministry of Health and Ghana Health Service I would like to draw attention to that without which these relevant interventions cannot happen. The Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service should: 1. Be committed to posting specialists to the regions and districts; and creating the right mix of health professionals on site 2. Ensure that the health facilities are properly constituted (staff, equipment, accommodation and conducive learning environment) to meet the accreditation requirements for centres and sites for residency training; and provide the right incentives and motivations for efficient service delivery 3. Review their internal policies regarding study leave in particular and conditions of service in general to promote health manpower development. Teaching hospitals should increase their efforts at sponsoring doctors into residency training for their own use rather than poaching from the Ghana Health Service. In this regard all universities should emulate the initiative of the University of Health and Allied Sciences in sponsoring residents to meet their academic needs. This move will allow the Ghana Health Service to take full charge of the residents they sponsor.
New Faculties The Academic Board has approved the establishment of two faculties Ophthalmology, and Otorhinolaryngology previously sub-specialties of the Faculty of Surgery. We congratulate them. e-learning We indicated last year our progress in establishing an electronic Learning Management System in support of our programme of extending training to sites outside the teaching hospitals. I am pleased to report that the final pieces are falling in place. We will be joined to the National Information Technology Agency network this week; and our new website is ready. We have also hired an IT Manager to oversee this resource. Product Quality The quality of the products of this Ghana College enterprise is dependent on several factors paramount among them being the resident, the trainer and the training environment. Last year we reported on a preliminary investigation into the perception of the quality of our products. This year an exercise conducted by Professor Lade Wosornu as part of his Keynote address at the 2014 GMA annual meeting in Takoradi provided further insight into the kind of doctor coming out of the College. It has been an agenda of the College to institutionalise a mechanism for assessing and evaluating our training programmes in the context of content, delivery and environment; and ultimately the quality of our training programmes and products. We have recently engaged an Academic Affairs manager who will coordinate our efforts to ensure that our products are fit for purpose. The College has also initiated discussions with the Royal College of Physicians London in working together in training trainers and also improving on our assessment of exit competencies of the trainee. Trainers Talking about our trainers reminds me of many conversations I have had on the constitutional requirement of a retiring age. Some have wondered why medical specialists in the public service are put to pasture at an age when their practice experience and knowledge has matured. Their exit from the public service adversely affects the manpower we require for specialist training.
Perhaps it is time to take a look at this particular circumstance, given that for certain categories in academia and the legal professions provision is made for traversing the sixty-years line. Endowment Fund This evening during the College Dinner, the College Endowment Fund will be re-launched. The Fund will contribute to efforts at promoting the academic activities of the College, particularly in the area of senior specialist exposure to international practice. Discussions have started with the Royal College of Physicians of London for our residents to participate in their Medical Training Initiative (MTI) for speciality training in the UK. We are hopeful that this will start in 2016 after all necessary protocols and understandings have been agreed. We are looking for similar opportunities with other organisations. The Fund will contribute towards supporting such programmes. Your Excellency, the Endowment Fund offers a great opportunity for the State to confirm its commitment to provide the people of Ghana the quality medical specialists they need by generously contributing to the Fund; and doing so in perpetuity. We have an illustrious Board of Trustee to ensure the credibility of the Fund. Diaspora Relations We continue to enjoy the company of the members of the Ghana Physicians and Surgeons Foundation of North America and the African Partners Medical in our annual jointly organised Medical Knowledge Fiesta. There is interest from Ghanaian doctors in the diaspora in other locations in such activities. The US group is working with the College to build a database of subject area experts to deliver lectures and discussions through our ICT platform. The group, once again, paid for the subscription to the UpToDate service valued at US$ 6,000.00. Council has now decided to take up this subscription in subsequent years. Funding The current admission procedure has to a large extent placed the onus of training fees on the shoulder of employers as should be. The College expects sponsors and employers to do what is right and free the Rector from running around collecting training fees. The Ministry of Health still owes the College fees for fresh and continuing residents for this academic year. It is necessary that we continue to strive for a sustainable mechanism for
funding postgraduate medical specialist training. We have given indications to the Hon Minister of some inducements we may apply to encourage the prompt settlement of their obligations. I hope it does not come to that. The Future The future of this College should be rooted in its past. The philosophy, conceptualization and mission of this College have served it well up to now. Increasingly some of the ingredients of our College are being looked on favourably by the sister colleges in English-speaking West Africa. Indeed, the newly established Liberian College of Physicians and Surgeons took a lot from the Ghana College. Eleven years are long enough for us to start looking at the contours of the path we have charted so far. Strategic Plan [How not to fly by the seat of our pants] In the coming year Council has approved the preparation of the College s Strategic Plan. The process will be informed by, among others, The Enterprise Risk Management report on the College, the results of the preliminary investigations into the quality of our products and above all the strategic goals and business model as championed by the governing body of the College. We also anticipate that the Legislative Instrument on the law establishing the College Act 833, Part II will be laid before parliament soon; and we also expect to develop Statutes for the College. Summary In the last five years the College has endeavoured to remain faithful to its mandate. We have not lost stride in the number of Members and Fellows produced We have become more and more the place for governments without national colleges in the sub-region to seek medical specialists training; We have installed an e-learning management system that places us at a big advantage in advancing our training activities; We are actively pursuing the decentralization of our education and learning function to the good our communities and our training programmes; We work more harmoniously with our major stakeholders in charting the destination of our residents and the College; The College journal is firmly established; and The land we occupy is now fully owned by the College.
Closing I would like to express my appreciation to the College Council, the staff of the College Secretariat, the training sites, the Faculties of the College, the Ministry of Health, the Ghana Health Service, the residents, the Ghana Medical Association and all other stakeholders for their assistance and challenges that have made the College go through this year. Thank You.