Seven resident doctors at the Korle-bu Teaching Hospital (KTBH) will benefit from a newly launched Emergency Medicine Residency programme for the next six years.

They are made up of three members and four fellows of the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons (GCPS).

The training programme, which was launched by the KTBH in Accra on Monday, would help equip beneficiaries with skills in handling specialty emergency cases.

Speaking at the launch, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the KBTH, Dr Opoku Ware Ampomah, noted that the launch of the training programme was timely as it would help reduce the burden at the Emergency Department as well as the cost involved in training resident doctors in emergency medicine practice.

He said in the past, the hospital had to send resident doctors to the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi for training at a cost to the hospital.

Dr Ampomah asked the beneficiaries to take advantage of the training to upgrade their skills and capacities in order to improve health care delivery at the emergency department of the hospital.

The President of the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons (GCPS), Dr John Nkrumah Mills, bemoaned the increasing rate of road accidents in the country.

He said the situation was putting increasing pressure on the emergency departments of the various hospitals across the country.

Dr Mills said that the Emergency Department of KBTH had been in the news for the wrong reasons as people had made complaints about the poor treatment of patients at the department.

He called on the beneficiaries to pursue higher standards in order to win the trust of the general public.

The GCPS, Dr Mills said, would continue to collaborate with hospitals in the country to come up with innovative programmes to train doctors in different specialties in order to help improve health care delivery in Ghana.

The Rector of the GCPS, Prof. Richard Adanu, said that the country needed an emergency department with specialist physicians to attend to emergency cases.

He asked the trainees to learn from the faculty members of the GCPS who would spend time with them to enable them serve the people in the country.