Education and Training

Like many developing countries, Guyana has a severe shortage of surgeons. Rather than rely on overseas training, Guyana developed its own Diploma in Surgery and asked for assistance from the Canadian Association of General Surgeons. This paper reviews the initial results of Guyana’s first postgraduate training program. [from abstract]

The authors designed and delivered a pilot postgraduate medical education program in the virtual world, Second Life to explore the potential of a virtual world for delivering continuing medical education (CME) designed for physicians; determine possible instructional designs using SL for CME; understand the limitations of SL for CME; understand the barriers, solutions, and costs associated with using SL, including required training; and measure participant learning outcomes and feedback. [adapted from abstract]

This study aimed to assess the importance medical students place on learning about selected social determinants of health, explore their knowledge of selected global health topics and analyse any associations with medical students’ mobility patterns and education in tropical medicine or global health. [from abstract]

This article evaluates an initiative launched in Kenya to improve malaria case-management through enhanced in-service training and provision of job aids. [from abstract]

This article sought to systematically assess the research training needs of health care professionals working at Peruvian governmental institutions leading HIV and tuberculosis control and among senior stakeholders in the field. [from abstract]

This article summarizes a project that tested whether mobile learning in combination with social media might provide a solution for the lack of training for health care workers scattered across the country. [adapted from author]

The aim of this study is to determine the prevalence of burnout in Greek medical residents, investigate its relationship with training satisfaction during residency and survey Greek medical residents’ opinion towards the European Work Time Directive. [from abstract]

This paper describes the promise and limitations of a strategy that uses training workshop to help non-governmental health organizations, governments and businesses to understand public-private sector partnerships in health and to provide them with tools for developing effective collaborations. [from author]

Recruitment and retention of qualified health professionals, especially physicians, is a major challenge in health service delivery in the high north, similar to other remote areas of the world. This article describes a strategy to address this problem and evaluates the effect of the strategy for Finnmark, the northernmost county of Norway. [from abstract]

This guide was developed to assist preservice health institutions in Malawi in creating, updating, or adapting the family planning content of their curricula and individual courses. Included in this document are materials that institutions and individual tutors can use to develop technically accurate and pedagogically sound lessons on family planning. [adapted from introduction]

This paper compares the socioeconomic profile of medical students registered at the Faculty of Medicine of Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo, for the years 1998/99 and 2007/08 to describe the medical students’ social and geographical origins, expectations and perceived difficulties regarding their education and professional future. [adapted from abstract]

Medical students have been attending rural clinical schools (RCSs) since 2001. Although there have been generally positive single institution reports, there has been no multi-institution study using a common survey instrument. The experiences of medical students who attended a number of RCSs during 2006 were evaluated using a rural-specific questionnaire. [from abstract]

This article presents an innovative approach to healthcare worker (HCW) training using mobile phones as a personal learning environment. Twenty physicians used individual Smartphones in urban and peri-urban HIV/AIDS clinics in Peru, where almost 70% of the nations HIV patients in need of treatment. [adapted from abstract]

Follow-up studies of former students are an efficient way to organize the entire process of professional training and curriculum evaluation. The aim of this study was to identify professional profile subgroups based on job-related variables in a sample of former students of a Brazilian public dental school. [from abstract]

There is currently limited published evidence of health-related training programmes in Africa that have produced graduates, who remain and work in their countries after graduation. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that the majority of graduates of field epidemiology training programmes in Africa stay on to work in their home countries, many as valuable resources to overstretched health systems. [from abstract]

The objective of this qualitative study was to understand how nursing professionals coped with job retraining in a public hospital after an illness. [adapted from abstract]

This study assessed the social networks in a Master of Hospital and Healthcare Administration program. The authors’ conclusions suggest that intentional social network development may be an important opportunity for capacity-building programs as healthcare systems improve their ability to manage resources and tackle emerging problems. [adapted from introduction]

This study evaluated the effect of malaria rapid diagnostic tests on health workers anti-malarial drug prescriptions among outpatients at low level health care facilities within different malaria epidemiological settings in Uganda. [from abstract]

The purpose of this study was to assess the efficacy of a clinically relevant educational program to enhance the language proficiency and professionalism of international medical graduates in a Canadian context. [adapted from introduction]

Against the background of the development of palliative care in Austria the authors undertook this survey to identify the preferences of the general pracitioners’ and nurses’ regarding the specific design of training seminars in palliative care. We wanted to gain a better insight into which educational topics, timeframe, location and group designs are likely to attract a majority of different professional groups. [from author]

This study is a continuation of an earlier report that found online continuing medical education (CME) to be highly effective in making evidence-based decisions. [from abstract]

The goal of this article was to analyse the impact of the medical colleges that have been set up within the last two decades by production of doctors and the effect on the health of the people. [from abstract]

The aim of this project was to identify if there is a link between what nursing students learn in simulated clinical laboratory sessions and what they experience during their clinical placements. [from abstract]

This toolkit has been developed to facilitate the development of a public health workforce competent to meet its assigned mission. One part of that process is the use of competency-based curricula in public health training or education and how to determine the right activities for moving from a competency set to developing a curriculum. [adapted from author]

This pilot study evaluates how an intervention to improve hypertension care for ethnic minority patients of African descent in the Netherlands affected the attitudes and perceived competence of hypertension care providers with regard to culturally appropriate care. [adapted from abstract]

Developing a sufficient and sustainable rural physician workforce requires commitment and cooperation from communities, governments and medical schools. The author argues that medical education can play an important role in the recruitment and retention of rural physicians. [adapted from author]

This article outlines the Latin American Medical School program model which trains young people from developing countries and sends them home as doctors with a pledge to practise in underserved areas. [adapted from author]

This document describes an approach to developing competencies that can guide interprofessional education and collaborative practice for all professions in a variety of contexts and is the first attempt to develop a Canadian model of interprofessional competencies that is applicable to all health professions. [from author]

This report outlines a training program for health extension workers in long-acting family planning methods in Ethiopia.

Heads of pharmacy schools in Africa, as with all global regions, are facing educational challenges to meet local medicines needs, ranging from the physical infrastructure and laboratory teaching equipment to the world-wide shortage in academic capacity to fill teaching positions. Seven heads of pharmacy schools in Africa met recently to discuss how to tackle this situation in order to provide solutions from which the global educational infrastructure can learn. [from author]