Docia Kisseih

Docia Angelina Naki Kisseih (1919–2008) was a Ghanaian nurse, midwife and educator. She was the first Ghanaian to be the country's Chief Nursing Officer after British colonial rule ended. She was influential in pioneering developments in nursing and nursing education, and in her fifties she began university lecturing while studying to become the first nurse in Ghana with a doctoral degree. She also took on leadership roles in a number of professional organisations.

Early life and education Born on 13 August 1919 at Krobo Odumase, Manya Krobo, her early education was at local Presbyterian schools that had been established by European missionaries: first an infant school and then Krobo Girls Middle School. She spent three years at Achimota School where she obtained her Cambridge Higher School Certificate in 1938, and in 1940 she enrolled at the Korle Bu maternity hospital for three years of nursing training with an emphasis on midwifery. The first State Registered Nurses’ Training College was opened in Ghana in 1945. In 1961 she was made Chief Nursing Officer of the newly independent Ghana: her job title inherited from the earlier British system. It went on to say she had been determined that standards should be high after the post-independence departure of qualified nurses from overseas.

Kisseih was the founder and first president of the Ghana Registered Nurses Association (GRNA) formed in 1960 by a merger of two other nursing bodies, one led by her.

Her honorary degree was conferred ceremonially at Docia Kisseih's home because of her frailty and she died later that month, in August 2008. In 2015 the GRNA instituted a series of lectures to be called the Dr Docia Kisseih Memorial Lectures.