Even in advanced countries like UK and USA, nurses are not paid very well and citizens in the profession complain a lot. They don’t just complain, it is said that healthcare professionals in these countries quit working in the healthcare sector to find jobs in other fields of work.
I can say, all over the world, on average, healthcare providers are not properly rewarded and leaders in these developed countries recognize its consequential effects. So, they put in place measures to mitigate the negative impacts on their healthcare system.
The measure is not about raising the wages of healthcare providers to retain them, rather, how to attract skilful and experienced care-providers from other poor countries to fill the gap.
They put in place this sort of ‘Plan B’ because they see dissatisfied, trapped, well-trained healthcare providers in other countries; especially in some parts of Asia and Africa. They (nurses) do not have the option of leaving for other better-paying jobs.
Owing to this, programmes to attract foreign healthcare providers proved to be very effective. How is it so? A nurse in UK earns, let say 4000 pounds a month and one in Ghana earns 3000 Ghana cedis. To the UK nurse, 5000 pounds is inadequate and 3000 Ghana cedis is woefully inadequate for the Ghanaian nurse.
However, if the Ghanaian nurse relocates and earns 3000 pounds, he/she has more advantages over a UK citizen earning 5000 pounds. The Ghanaian nurse now has the benefit of converting pound currency into Ghana cedi and that makes a huge difference.
Today, June 2025, just 3000 pounds amounts to over 41,000 Ghana cedis. How then do you compare, let’s say, 40,000 Ghana cedis to mere three thousand Ghana Cedis? Clearly, this is part of the reasons leaders of developed countries succeed in filling the void left by dissatisfied citizens in their healthcare system.
This huge discrepancy here in Ghana and abroad is fuelling more dissatisfaction and encourages more brain-drain of our best professionals.
As indicated, nurses are not being paid very well in most countries and I have just explained how other countries are tackling the problem of low wages, thereby curtailing its effects on healthcare delivery. The question, however is, will Ghana also adopt similar measures? And how can it be done, looking at the bad economic conditions in the country?
As the government is championing sending nurses to work abroad, would they bring in nurses from UK or Germany to work in Ghana? And if so, how much are they going to be paid? The same amount of three thousand cedis given the Ghanaian nurse or they will be paid equivalent of what they earn in their home countries.?
These questions are legitimate because, when a Ghanaian nurse goes to work in UK or U.S.A., they are paid according to what local nurses there receive and not measured against what they were earning back home.
The question again is, going by this principle, do you think the government of Ghana can retain a nurse who earns equivalent of 50,000 cedis in U.S.A by giving him/her three thousand Ghana cedis as nurses in Ghana?
Or, could the government go about looking for more dissatisfied nurses in other countries and employ them? Well, I leave it to you to reflect on.
As indicated in my other writeups on this subject, I encourage leaders in charge of healthcare delivery and political actors to collaborate and come out with better wages for the Ghanaian nurse working in the country. This will incentivise hard working ones to remain in the country to give out their best.
