Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons appeal to new admitted Members to enroll in the Fellowship Training programmes.
The call was contained in a speech of the Rector, Prof. Richard Adanu, at the 18th Annual General and Scientific Meeting (AGSM) of the college in Accra last Wednesday.
The AGSM was themed: “Impact of COVID-19 on health care and medical training in Ghana: Lessons learned and the way forward”.
According to Prof. Adanu, with the admission of our new Fellows and Members, the College has produced almost 1500 specialists since 2007. However, the sad news related to our training efforts is that less than 200 of these specialists have gone on to enrol in our Fellowship training programmes to become consultant eligible senior specialists.
He therefore appealed to the newly admitted Members of the College to consider enrolling into Fellowship training programmes of the College, so that the College can swell up the number of trainers and increase postgraduate training all over the country.
He said, the College has looked at some of the reasons related to this gap and are working with the Ministry of Health to come out with policies that would help to overcome the obstacles. We expect to come out with an announcement about these policy changes within the next few months.
The exams this year had a pass rate of 72% at the Primary level, 86% at the Membership level and 75% at the Fellowship level. In all, 355 newly qualified physicians and surgeons were inducted into the College, while 37 others were admitted as Fellows-by-examination.
Prof. Adanu said, this year’s event admitted the highest number of members and fellows. These numbers tell us how far our College has come in postgraduate medical education and it goes without saying that we would not have come this far without the efforts of the past leadership of the College.