Education and Training

Areas of the Vietnam still experience severe shortages of health workers for reproductive health, particularly mountainous and other remote areas populated by ethnic minorities. This case study evaluates a program to lower maternal mortality rates and encourage healthier births in these areas through an 18 month training for ethic minority midwives. [adapted from author]

This case study highlights the efficiency with which the Community Health and Development (CHAD) program of the Christian Medical College, Vellore has obtained results through a combination of community-based provider training and innovative community service delivery methodologies, as well as discuss how aspects of the model can be adopted by other institutions to achieve similar results. [adapted from author]

This article presents the finding of a study to assess the feasibility, acceptabilty and effectiveness of short online courses for mental health professionals and service users. [adapted from author]

Medical student education is perceived as utilising significant amounts of preceptors’ time, negatively impacting on clinical productivity. This study triangulated practice financial data with the perspectives of clinical supervisors before and after regional/rural longitudinal integrated community-based placements of medical students to determine at what point students become financially beneficial to a practice. [adapted from abstract]

This short presentation introduces innovations along the health worker education pipeline, transformative scale up of health professional education, and the definitions and processes of producing health worker education guidelines and recommendations. [adapted from author]

Virtual worlds are increasingly being explored as a support for education. The aim of this work was to study the suitability of Second Life as an educational tool for primary healthcare professionals. [from abstract]

The government of Pakistan identified 4 medical colleges for the introduction of a new medical curriculum, but despite concerted efforts, it was not implemented. The purpose of this research was to identify the barriers and reasons for delay in implementation of the curriculum and to assess the understanding of the stakeholders. [adapted from abstract]

This overview outlines how the growing trend in online learning can open up new perspectives and opportunities for Africa’s health professionals. [adapted from author]

This study aimed to evaluate perceived and assessed clinical capabilities of recent graduates of an outcomes-based integrated medical program and compare to benchmarks from traditional content-based or process-based programs. [from abstract]

The aim of this systematic review was to explore the use of feedback in improving the effectiveness of workplace based assessments in postgraduate medical training. [adapted from abstract]

This report contains the results of an in-depth training needs assessment of Lesotho health workers foces on workers at the central and district level. [adapted from summary]

The purpose of this document is to act as a master plan for all the resources, methodologies, priorites and monitoring & evaluation processes to implement a program for continuing education for Lesotho health workers and serve as a point of reference for all stakeholders and beneficiaries. [adapted from author]

This IFHHRO online training manual shares materials developed to train health workers in health and human rights issues. It intends to bridge the gap between the legal conceptualization of the right to health and the daily practice of health workers by providing human rights education materials specifically designed for health workers. [from introduction]

This article evaluated a four-year action research study across the Australian Capital Territory health system to strengthen interprofessional collaboration though multiple intervention activities. [from abstract]

This study aimed to assess whether the use of cell phone text messaging to improve access to continuing healthcare education in under-resourced settings is acceptable to South African midwives in both the public and private sectors. [adapted from author]

This study examined the hypothesis that a medical school in a low-resource setting, based on volunteer faculty, can be sustainable and associated with improvement in medical workforce and population health outcomes. [from abstract]

This study aimed to evaluate students’ learning outcomes from a redesigned eLearning version of the reproductive health section of a public health course, as measured by improved knowledge acquisition and opinions, and to assess e-course utilization. [adapted from abstract]

This article reports on a three week-long program of collaborative learning courses, in which 19 mental health professionals and 12 mental health service users participated. Data were analysed to consider the ways in which participants interacted, and how this contributed to the goal of online learning about using internet technologies for mental health practice. [adapted from abstract]

This survey is a descriptive study of Sub-Saharan African medical schools to increase the level of understanding and expand the baseline data on medical schools in the region. [adapted from abstract]

This research evaluated the PALM PLUS (Practical Approach to Lung Health and HIV/AIDS in Malawi), a training and job-aid intervention designed to simplify and integrate existing Malawian national guidelines into a single, simple, user-friendly guideline for mid-level health care workers. [from abstract]

This document allows medical schools in low-resource areas to get a sense of where they are on the road towards greater social accountability and in their ability to increase impact on health and health services. [adapted from author]

Verah Nkosi, a nursing-midwifery student at the Kamuzu College of Nursing in Malawi, shares her perspective and illustrates some common challenges for increasing the quantity and quality of graduates from health professional schools. [from author]

This brief discusses interprofessional education as an emerging theme in the education of health care professionals in response to issues such as patient safety and workforce shortages. [from abstract]

This report details an eLearning intervention for nurses in Kenya to improve the standards of nursing care by equipping enrolled nurses with the skills to manage new and re-emerging diseases, address the shortage of qualified nurses in Kenya, improve quality of care and achieve health-related Millennium Development Goals. [adapted from author]

This article specifically addresses the need for a transformative approach to medical education—one that is defined by a commitment to social responsibility and insists on inter-sectoral engagement to determine how students are recruited, educated, and deployed as doctors. [from author]

This study was undertaken to make a clear needs assessment, define priorities and identify resources to plan appropriate continuing education programs and prepare reference materials for health workers, particularly with the deployment of 30,000 health extension workers which will create additional information access needs in Ethiopia. [adapted from abstract]

This learning resource package contains the trainer manual with all the material to design and hold a traning course for community health workers on postpartum family planing methods and counselling skills. It also has a participant manual for use during the training.

This article outlines a project and its evaluation that used ICT equipment to increase the uptake of continuing professional development training in Uganda. [adapted from abstract]

This paper seeks to analyze the import of distance education for promotion of proficiency skills in the health sector and review ongoing professional development programmes for health workers in Ghana, and come out with strategies to offer training avenues leading to the professional growth of the individuals and economic growth of the country. [from abstract]

This paper describes the evaluation of a tailored HIV curriculum for village AIDS committees (VACs) within a rural area to determine if the curriculum increased levels of HIV knowledge among the VAC members through conducting baseline and post-training surveys. [adapted from author]