While nursing globally has been known as a typically female-dominated profession, the practice in the Gold Coast, now Ghana, was initially a male-dominated one.
Following Ghana’s independence in 1957, the development of nursing gradually began to shift amid a dynamic change.
Prior to this, all senior nurses in the Gold Coast were composed of White colonial women, but how did the profession actually gain roots in the country?
In January of 1945, Isobel Hutton arrived from Britain to the Gold Coast to start a nursing school which was associated with that of the British nursing system, with focus on training nurses for the Ghanaian environment.
A training school named the State Registered Nurses (SRN) was quickly established upon Hutton’s arrival and was situated at Kumasi. Over the years, the school upgraded into a college and was relocated to Accra, near the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital.
According to research, Isobel Hutton introduced a curriculum which followed the syllabus set out by the General Nursing Council (GNC) of England and Wales.
The curriculum was to ensure that “locally trained nurses could be accepted for registration in Britain, to undergo post-basic courses there and eventually to take over the nursing duties of the country from the British colonial nursing sisters”
An image shared by @GhanaStories on Twitter, depicts the dressing of Ghanaian nurses at the time.
Though there’s not much significance in terms of their outfit, there still remains a startling semblance between how Ghanaian nurses looked in the 1960’s and how they look today in 2021.
See the image below:
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
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