Education and Training

Medical doctors and nurses in Bangladesh are concentrated in urban secondary and tertiary hospitals, while 70% of the population lives in rural areas. This situation has created a major challenge for the national health system, particularly for reducing the high maternal mortality rate, with fewer than 20% of births being attended by a skilled birth attendant. The Declaration of Safe Motherhood was desgined to address this issue, supportetd by a number of national programs and strategies. [from summary]

This commentary outlines strategies the authors have found successful in aligning health education and training with local health needs in ways that demonstrate socially accountable outcomes for Vancouver Island, Canada. [adapted from abstract]

The Ministry of Health and Medical Education in the Islamic Republic of Iran has undertaken a reform of its health system, in which-lower level managers are given new roles and responsibilities in a decentralized system. To support these efforts, a series of courses for health managers and trainers was developed. A total of seven short training courses were implemented, and a detailed evaluation of the courses was undertaken to guide future development of the training programs. [adapted from abstract]

Empirical investigations of health worker training in Kenya have been limited to mappings of health service providers in terms of cadre and distribution and assessments of the training needs for various skills. However, there has not been a comprehensive study of the influence of training on the provision of quality Emergency Obstetric Care (EmOC). We seek to fill this gap by assessing the link between health provider training and practice with regard to the provision of EmOC. [from author]

The Trauma Management Program (TMP) was developed to improve the capacity of local health workers to deliver effective trauma care. This report illustrates a method to increase the capacity of indigenous health workers to manage traumatic injuries. These health workers are able to provide trauma care for otherwise inaccessible populations in remote and conflicted regions. The principles learnt during the implementation of the TMP might be applied in similar settings. [from introduction]

This study evaluates the effectiveness and sustainability of a voluntary counseling and testing training program based on a training-of-trainers model. [adapted from abstract]

This study documents and assesses the impact of a major educational and support program on a change in the health service provision of a neonatal intensive care unit. [adapted from abstract]

This paper describes the results of safer circumcision training designed to improve circumcision knowledge, attitude and practice which was successfully delivered to traditional surgeons and nurses in South Africa. [adapted from abstract]

To build instructors’ capacity and address the knowledge gaps, the Capacity Project partnered with East, Central and Southern Africa Health Community and Africa’s Health in 2010 to deliver a week-long workshop on Contemporary Issues in Family Planning for midwifery tutors in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. [from author]

Ethiopia’s poor health status is due primarily to communicable diseases, poor nutrition, and lack of access to health services in general and for most of the rural, nomadic pastoralist and fringe areas in particular. In response, the government has launched a Health Extension Program for which training of Health Extension Workers has been started. This study assesses the first year’s training program in terms of its inputs, processes and output. [from abstract]

Long-Acting Family Planning (LAFP) methods, provide uninterrupted protection to women for 3 to 12 years. But they must be inserted by trained providers in a safe clinical environment. With limited facilities and few providers, widespread implementation of LAFP in Ethiopia requires training of significant numbers of rural providers and developing properly equipped facilities for implant and IUCD insertions. This document describes a training program for family planning. [from author]

This report discusses attrition rates in diagnostic and therapeutic radiography degree courses, and includes recommendations on how these rates could be reduced. [from introduction]

It is well-recognised that medical students whose training exposure is largely limited to tertiary-level training hospitals may be inappropriately equipped to deal with the most relevant health issues affecting rural communities. This article evaluated the perceived educational value of a 2 week clinical rotation undertaken by senior undergraduate medical students at rural district hospitals and health care centers in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. [from abstract}

Despite progress in developing more effective training methodologies, training initiatives for health workers continue to experience common pitfalls that have beset the overall success and cost-effectiveness of these programs for decades. These pitfalls are now seen as aggravating the current crisis in human resources for health and impeding the effective scale-up of training and the potential impact of promising strategies such as task shifting to address health worker shortages.

While evaluation is, in theory, a component of training programmes in health planning, training needs in this area remain significant. Improving health systems necessarily calls for having more professionals who are skilled in evaluation. This article describes a four-week course taken by two cohorts of health professionals from 11 francophone African countries. We discuss how the course came to be, its content, its teaching processes and the master’s programme results for students. [from abstract]

The Central America Field Epidemiology Training Program (CA FETP) is a public health capacity-building training programme aimed at developing high-caliber field epidemiologists at various levels of the public health system. The curriculum is competency-based, and is divided into a three-tiered training pyramid that corresponds to the needs at the local, district and central levels of the health system.[adapted from abstract]

Strong leadership and management skills are crucial to finding solutions to the human resource crisis in health. Health professionals and human resource (HR) managers worldwide who are in charge of addressing HR challenges in health systems often lack formal education in leadership and management. The Virtual Leadership Development Program is a web-based leadership development program that combines face-to-face and distance learning methodologies to strengthen the capacity of teams to identify and address health challenges and produce results. [adapted from abstract]

The toolkit was developed to facilitate improved access to appropriate and effective contraception for clients with HIV, especially through the strategic integration of family planning with HIV prevention, care, and treatment services.

The preclinical years of undergraduate medical education provide educational content in a structured learning environment whereas clerkships provide clinical training in a more experiential manner. Although early clinical skills training is emphasized in many medical schools, students still feel unprepared and anxious about starting their clerkships. This study identifies the skills medical students perceive as essential and those skill areas students are most anxious about prior to starting clerkship rotations. [from abstract]

The People’s Open Access Educational Initiative (Peoples-uni) aims to contribute towards public health capacity building in Developing Countries, through the provision of on-line education for public health practitioners. This document reports on a pilot module on the subject of maternal mortality was delivered at the end of 2007. [adapted from abstract]

The development of educational context around free and open-source materials available on the Internet has the ability to help build public health capacity in low- to middle-income countries. In a partnership across the global and digital divides, the People’s Open Access Education Initiative has been established to identigy open-access materials linked to the competences required to tackle public health problems, teach through online facilitation by volunteers in conjunction with members of local universities, and accredit learned competences. [adpated from abstract]

Continuing education is necessary for all health care providers to remain up-to-date with the rapid technological advances and accumulation of new knowledge resulting from constant research. This booklet is intended to provide guidelines for planning, accrediting and implementing continuing professional development in Uganda. [adapted from foreword]

This curriculum focuses on the fundamentals of quality health care services in presenting an approach to supervision that emphasizes mentoring, joint problem solving, and two-way communication. It is meant to be used by trainers who introduce the facilitative approach to supervision to supervisors from different levels of the health system: on-site and off-site supervisors, including medical and nonmedical supervisors. [from publisher]

The purpose of this primer is to document and promote best practices gleaned from worldwide experience in training private sector providers. [from introduction]

We reviewed published literature that outlines the principles of quality assurance in higher education from various institutions worldwide. Using this information, we designed a handbook that outlines the quality assurance principles in a simple and practical way. This was intended to enable institutions, even in developing countries, to adapt these principles in accordance with their local resource capacity. We subsequently pilot-tested this handbook at one of the sites in Ghana. [from abstract]

While the recruitement of rural doctors is steadily rising, there is concern about their long-term retention. In response, an orientation course for recently established rural doctors was set up in 2003, based on a training needs assessment. This paper draws lessons from this experience, focusing on processes and mechanisms operating in the relation between training and retention in rural practice. [adapted from author]

After a curriculum review, Makerere University’s longstanding traditional curriculum was converted to a problem based learning curriculum with a focus on Community Based Education and Service (COBES). As a component of COBES, radiography, medical, nursing, dentistry and pharmacy students are sent to community health facilities where they are expected to participate in community services and other primary healthcare activities.

There is increasing consensus that training programmes should focus on know-how instead of know-all. IntraHealth International’s Learning for performance: a guide and toolkit for health worker training and education programs offers a step-by-step, customizable approach designed to develop the right skills linked to job responsibilities. Using Learning for Performance yields more efficient training that focuses on what is essential for health workers to do their jobs and on effective learning methods.

Many countries are introducing, expanding, or undertaking major reform of pharmacy education. Such developments must be accompanied by robust systems to assure the quality of the educational structures, processes and outcomes; the latter primarily being graduates who are competent and capable of performing safely and effectively in their practice setting and contributing to the delivery of healthcare. [from author]

An updated and expanded version of the FIP Global Framework for Quality Assurance of Pharmacy Education Version 1 was published in 2015.

This presentation on the domestic training and international recruitment of health workers was offered during a dialogue hosted by the WHO and OECD.