Education and Training

Increased interest in parasite-based malaria diagnosis has led to increased use of rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs), particularly in rural settings. The scarcity of health facilities and trained personnel in many sub-Saharan African countries means that limiting RDT use to such facilities would exclude a significant proportion of febrile cases. Use of RDTs by volunteer community health workers (CHWs) is one alternative, but most sub-Saharan African countries prohibit CHWs from handling blood, and little is known about CHW ability to use RDTs safely and effectively. [adapted from introduction]

This three-part curriculum is designed to provide a broad range of health care workers with the skills and sensitivity needed to work with male clients and provide men’s reproductive health services. [from author]

This article compares the quality, quantity and distribution of tuberculosis physicians, laboratory staff, community health workers and nurses in Nigeria and Kyrgyzstan, and highlights implications for (re)training tuberculosis workers in developing countries. [from abstract]

This guide is a resource for trainers in developing in-service training for facility-based healthcare providers and community health workers (CHWs) who already have some basic experience with and understanding of RH/FP. This is not a training manual, but a reference guide which can be used and adapted by trainers based on whether or not trainees are facility-based or community-based. [from author]

Managers are an essential component of the health workforce. Good management is essential for quality service delivery and achieving desired health outcomes. This resource details a balanced, strategic approach to strengthening management capacity. [from introduction]

This book considers the topic of scaling up with a focus on ways to increase the impact of health service innovations that have been tested in pilot or experimental projects so as to benefit more people and to foster policy and program development on a lasting, sustainable basis.

Chapter 8 of this book describes an innovative educational approach to capacity building and scaling up reproductive health services in Latin America. It explains how the capacity to provide innovative training was scaled up in public sector reproductive health services in Brazil, Bolivia and Chile. [from introd

Rural nurses describe the nature of their practice as being embedded in working as a team where belonging is central to the success of the team and the individual nurse. As a result they form close professional and personal ties. The challenge for nursing students is to develop a sense of belonging to the rural hospital team so that preceptorship is successful. The objective of this article is to describe the cultural theme of a sense of belonging that nursing students develop during a rural hospital preceptorship. [adapted from abstract]

Community-based education (CBE) was developed thirty years ago in response to the maldistribution of physicians and subsequent inequity of health care services across geographical areas in developed and developing countries. Several medical schools in Nigeria report adopting CBE. This study seeks to identify and describe the CBE programs in accredited Nigerian medical schools and to report students’ assessments of the knowledge and skills gained during their community-based educational experience. [from abstract]

To date, traditional biomedical hospital-centered models of medical education have not produced physicians in quantities or with the competencies and commitment needed to meet health needs in poor communities worldwide. The Global Health Education Consortium conducted an initial assessment of selected medical education programs/schools established specifically to meet these needs.

Leaders of the University of Belize’s Faculty of Nursing and Allied Health had a vision. Their country has the third highest HIV prevalence in the region, after Haiti and Guyana, yet it lacked an effective system for training providers in counseling and testing. As faculty members, they dreamed of establishing a national training center that would provide the latest resources and trainings for both students and providers. [from author]

Preparing health workers to confront the HIV/AIDS epidemic is an urgent challenge in Haiti. There is a critical shortage of doctors, leaving nurses as the primary care providers for much of the population. Haiti’s nurses play a leading role in HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment. However, they do not receive sufficient training at the pre-service level to carry out this important work. The Ministry of Health and Population collaborated with the International Training and Education Center on HIV to create a competency-based HIV/AIDS curriculum to be integrated into the the national schools

The AVICENNA Directories is a publicly accessible database of schools, colleges, and universities for education of academic professions in health. The database includes medical schools, schools of pharmacy, schools of public health and educational institutions of other academic health professions. For medical educational institutions, this database replaces the World Directory of Medical Schools published by WHO since 1953. [adapted from publisher]

In 2001 the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Gezira (FMUG) introduced the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) strategy into its medical curriculum. The emphasis was on pre-service training that addresses standard case management and the IMCI community component. This report presents the experience of FMUG in integrating such a training package into the medical curriculum. It explains the rationale for introducing the IMCI community component and the guiding principles for doing so.

Scaling up the implementation of new health care interventions can be challenging and demand intensive training or retraining of health workers. This paper reports on the results of testing the effectiveness of two different kinds of face-to-face facilitation used in conjunction with a well-designed educational package in the scaling up of kangaroo mother care. [from abstract]

The article presents a successful application in Mozambique of a leadership development program created by Management Sciences for Health. [from abstract]

This report summarizes key results of the evaluation of a distance learning course in the Standard Days Method. This course responds to a growing demand for low-cost options to training for family planning service providers. This option was considered as a potentially useful alternative to traditional class-room training, which can be both costly and time-consuming. [adapted from abstract]

The Knowledge Improvement Tool (KIT) was created to allow family planning supervisors to quickly identify gaps in knowledge of Standard Days Method (SDM) providers, allowing them to provide targeted, effective support during routine supervisory visits. This study was designed to compare the effectiveness and the cost benefit of KIT to other methods of reinforcing SDM provider knowledge. [adapted from author]

The PARiHS framework (Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services) has proved to be a useful practical and conceptual heuristic for many researchers and practitioners in framing their research or knowledge translation endeavors. However, as a conceptual framework it still remains untested and therefore its contribution to the overall development and testing of theory in the field of implementation science is largely unquantified.

This paper provides an integrated summary of the conceptual and theoretical thinking thus far regarding PARiHS. It introduces a typology used to distinguish between the terms conceptual framework, theory and model

Interprofessional education (IPE) has been suggested as an answer to improving the effectiveness of health professional teamwork, which in turn is regarded as a key strategy for improving the delivery and outcomes of increasingly complex healthcare approaches. There is a strong theoretical base to support the implementation of IPE for all health professionals, and in response many training programs now do this. This article presents some theory-based but practical advice for how to develop effective IPE activities. [from abstract]

The aim of this paper is to review the share of the medical sector in the higher education enhancement project fund (HEEPF), its outcomes, sustainability, and to provide recommendations for keeping the momentum of reform pursuit in the future. [from abstract]

This material contains a suggested workshop design for use by individuals and organizations planning human resources for health (HRH) assessments. These materials can also be used to train supervisors and data collectors to conduct an HRH assessment. [from author]

This database contains listings for medical schools all over the world. Users can search by region or by country to access details about the schools available.

Initial nursing or midwifery education prepares professionals for the workforce thus there is a need for programmes to be of a high quality. The development of global standards for initial nursing and midwifery education identifies the essential, critical components of education. [from author]

Field epidemiology training programs have been successful models to address a country’s needs for a skilled public health workforce, partly due to their responsiveness to the countries’ unique needs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has partnered with ministries of health to strengthen their workforce through customized competency-based training programs. The standard curriculum has supported the development and expansion of programs while still allowing for adaptation.

This report calls for a rapid and significant scaling up of the education and training of health workers as part of a broader effort to strengthen health systems. It highlights the importance of training to meet a country’s own health needs and the great opportunity represented by the increased use of community- and mid-level workers. [from foreword]

There are also case studies from Ghana, Malawi, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Bangladesh on strategic implementation of health worker training plans.

This note discusses challenges and options in scaling up the production of skilled health workers and strengthening the health professions educational capacity of the countries in crisis, particularly in Africa. [from introduction]

Measuring and monitoring the whole education and training pipeline is essential to the planning, management and quality control of the health workforce in a country. This requires timely and reliable data on each of its phases. [from author]

An immunization consultation is useful when health workers are providing immunizations in their service area, but do not work in partnership with the community to attain full coverage. A consultation is not training but rather an opportunity to step back, look at problems that lead to low coverage and design strategies that involve the community in increasing that coverage. The consultation outlined in this Facilitator’s Guide is designed to help trainers enable health workers consider ways to increase and sustain a high immunization coverage in their respective service areas.

Despite ample evidence that HIV has entered the general population, most HIV awareness programs in India continue to neglect rural areas. Low HIV awareness and high stigma, fueled by low literacy, seasonal migration, gender inequity, spatial dispersion, and cultural taboos pose extra challenges to implement much-needed HIV education programs in rural areas. This paper describes a peer education model developed to educate and empower low-literacy communities in the rural district of Perambalur in India. [from abstract]

Infectious diseases kill more than 10 million people worldwide every year. It is therefore vital that doctors receive a good education in this field. Online learning is one way in which doctors can learn new knowledge and skills. We conducted this study to determine whether the infectious diseases interactive online learning packages enabled primary care professionals to increase their knowledge and skills in the area of infectious diseases. [from abstract]