Preservice Education

Nursing Education Partnership Initiative Tackles the Global Nursing Shortage

Sarah Dwyer — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 14:28:47 +0000

Around the world nurses are often the front line of the formal medical system, providing care to underserved areas and filling in where and when doctors are in short supply. Yet it has been estimated that sub-Saharan Africa needs 600,000 additional nurses just to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

The Nursing Education Partnership Initiative (NEPI)—the US Government’s unified program to address the underproduction of nursing professionals in developing countries—convened its partners for the first time in a meeting in June in Washington, DC. NEPI’s goal is to assist in the nursing component of the US Government’s commitment to training 140,000 additional health workers in developing countries by 2015.

NEPI is led by PEPFAR with government partners USAID and the Department of Health and Human Services. Other partners include CapacityPlus led by IntraHealth International, Columbia University, the World Health Organization, and the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

Author's name:

Kate Tulenko

Publication Date:

June 2010 (All day)

What’s So Rosy about Garden City?

Sarah Dwyer — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 17:57:13 +0000

The walls. They’re the first thing you notice when you arrive at Garden City University College, a small school in Kumasi, Ghana. They’re painted a pale mauve. During the magic hour, when the sun’s low and red, the building and everyone in it glows.

The women who lead it. We’d come to document the school’s progress toward its goal of graduating more health workers, and we had hours of interviews lined up. Garden City’s leaders are stepping up to help address the country’s shortage of health workers. Ghana has fewer than half the minimum number of doctors, nurses, and midwives recommended by the World Health Organization to provide adequate access to health care.

So school leaders are using CapacityPlus tools to improve school management and identify cost-effective ways to educate more health workers. And we couldn’t help but notice that many of those leaders we met—from the new acting president to the dean of students—were powerful women who #MakeItHappen.

Author's name:

Carol Bales

Publication Date:

March 2015

Supporting Lifelong Learning among Nigerian Community Health Workers through a Targeted Assessment of Training Needs

Sarah Dwyer — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 18:07:08 +0000

Lifelong learning is the ongoing, voluntary, and self-motivated pursuit of knowledge for either personal or professional reasons. It is not confined to the classroom but takes place throughout life and in a range of situations. To develop and maintain the competencies needed to deliver high-quality services, health workers must be lifelong learners. Formal continuing education and training activities can support lifelong learning. Yet to be effective, they must target identified gaps between each worker’s current knowledge and skills and what is actually needed on the job. Training needs assessments provide information to target learning activities toward identified competency gaps and learning needs of specific health workers.

In Nigeria, CapacityPlus collaborated with the Community Health Practitioners Registration Board of Nigeria (CHPRBN) and the Federal Ministry of Health to assess the training needs of community health workers in the South-South region. The assessment focused on globally accepted knowledge, skills, and attitudes for community health practitioners in nine competency domains:

Author's name:

Rebecca Bailey and Joseph Eton

Publication Date:

December 2014

Scaling Up and Transforming Health Workforce Education and Training for Improved Health Equity

Carol Bales — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 14:56:15 +0000

This post was originally published on the Global Health Workforce Alliance Members’ Platform. We encourage you to join and contribute to discussions like this one.

The statistics are startling: today the world is in urgent need of 7.2 million additional doctors, nurses, and midwives, according to the WHO, and by 2035 that number will rise to 12.9 million. Recent estimates show that just under one million doctors, nurses, and midwives graduate each year. At this rate, it would take more than seven years to produce the additional skilled workers currently needed. Yet in seven years, the need for health workers will be much higher.

Author's name:

Rebecca Bailey and Heather Ross

Publication Date:

April 2014

The Winds of Change

Carol Bales — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 20:18:58 +0000

The Harmattan is a dry and dusty wind that blows right over Nigeria from the Sahara Desert into the Gulf of Guinea. During my recent trip to Abuja, the Harmattan was nearly ending and the dust was beginning to lift its cloud over the city, making way for clear and sunny days. I thought this was a perfect analogy for CapacityPlus’s work supporting preservice education for midwifery and community health workers in the country.

Just outside of Abuja at the School of Midwifery FCT Gwagalada, I had the opportunity to meet with 19 midwifery students, each a beneficiary of a scholarship provided by CapacityPlus to assist with tuition fees for their third and final year of training.

Author's name:

Amanda Puckett

Publication Date:

March 2014

Picturing Our Work: Delivering Over a Thousand Textbooks for Students in Nigeria

Carol Bales — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 15:12:29 +0000

Last month, CapacityPlus delivered much-needed textbooks and other educational materials to 11 schools of health technology and midwifery in Nigeria. Here I am shaking hands with Sampson Tita, the principal of a school of health technology in Nassarawa State. We had just opened boxes and boxes containing brand new books for use by students like these that are studying to become community health extension workers.

Author's name:

Joseph Eton

Publication Date:

January 2014

“We Have Done It Before, We Are Doing It Now, and We Will Do It Again”: CapacityPlus Awards Scholarships to Midwifery Students

Carol Bales — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 14:27:15 +0000

“We Have Done It Before, We Are Doing It Now, and We Will Do It Again”: CapacityPlus Awards Scholarships to Midwifery Students

“We have done it before, we are doing it now, and we will do it again,” announced Samuel Ngobua, chief of party for CapacityPlus/Nigeria, during a scholarship award ceremony on August 13. The event marked the second scholarship award—this time to 1,200 midwifery students from 54 schools in 30 states!

The scholarship scheme is one of the interventions CapacityPlus is implementing to address low production of quality midwives and community health workers in Nigeria. A baseline assessment in September 2012 showed that financial difficulties caused a high number of students to drop out of their programs while other students pulled out until they had funds to continue. In February 2013, CapacityPlus awarded the first scholarships to 874 students in their final year of studying to become midwives and community health extension workers in two states, Edo and Benue.

Author's name:

Pius Emmanuel Uwamanua

Publication Date:

August 2013

Picturing Our Work: Scaling Up Health Worker Education

Carol Bales — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 19:28:30 +0000

What’s the woman in this photo smiling about? Where in the world was it taken?

Author's name:

Carol Bales and Heather Ross

Publication Date:

April 2013

Ready, Set, Study: CapacityPlus Accelerates Nigeria’s Production of New Health Workers

Carol Bales — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:59:48 +0000

Ready, Set, Study: CapacityPlus Accelerates Nigeria’s Production of New Health Workers

On February 19, 2013, CapacityPlus launched a scholarship bursary scheme, one of its mechanisms for supporting preservice education in Nigeria. The launch events, held in Edo and Benue States, were well attended by government dignitaries and by beneficiaries of the assistance. For me, it was a joyful thing to see smiles on the faces of indigent students who now could breathe some air of hope.

CapacityPlus/Nigeria is working to increase the numbers of health workers to meet the priority health needs of underserved populations. The project aims to boost the number of new health workers produced in Nigeria—in particular by supporting the preservice education and qualification of midwives and community health extension workers—accelerating Nigeria’s contribution toward PEPFAR’s target of supporting the training and retention of more than 140,000 new health workers.

Author's name:

Pius Emmanuel Uwamanua

Publication Date:

February 2013

International Nurses Day 2011: Increasing Access and Equity

jennifer — Thu, 12 May 2011 13:15:53 +0000

May 12 is celebrated the world over as International Nurses Day, with this year’s theme calling particular attention to issues of access and equity in health care.

Nurses make up the bulk of the health workforce, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, which has 5.5 nurses and midwives for every physician. While nurses’ contributions to the health system are well-established in the literature, to date, scant attention has been directed toward many of the critical issues nurses face in their careers.

Education
The status of nursing education in developing countries is poorly understood.

Author's name:

Shaun Noronha

Publication Date:

May 2011

Strengthening the Mental Health Workforce with eLearning

jennifer — Tue, 10 May 2011 20:01:45 +0000

Some countries have only one psychiatrist, and as many as half of developing countries have fewer than five mental health researchers. The World Health Organization’s calculations indicate that in low- and middle-income countries more than 239,000 additional mental health workers are needed, but only 54.5% of all low-income countries have specific psychiatric education.

One approach to addressing these shortages is through eLearning.

Academic courses and degrees
There are many institutes and companies throughout the world that offer online degrees and certificates, but the education level, cost, and international recognition varies.

Author's name:

Roos Korste, guest blogger

Publication Date:

May 2011

The Global Advisory Board: Implementing Health Professional School Reform

jennifer — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 17:59:04 +0000

The enthusiasm and excitement were palpable at the March 17th inaugural meeting of the Global Advisory Board on Strengthening Medical, Nursing, and Public Health Schools in Developing Countries.

Led by Board Chairman Dr. Ok Pannenborg and cochair Dr. Kate Tulenko, the board members asserted a firm commitment and solid leadership in support of the implementation of health professional school reform. During the meeting, members discussed key issues pertinent to strengthening health professional schools and shared with each other their global expertise.

Author's name:

Amanda Puckett and Shaun Noronha

Publication Date:

April 2011

Making Money Work: Global Advisory Board to Strengthen Health Professional Schools

jennifer — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:55:03 +0000

Recently, CapacityPlus announced the launch of the Global Advisory Board on Strengthening Medical, Nursing, and Public Health Schools in Developing Countries. The board—as part of our work to strengthen preservice education and training—will help to address management issues in health professional schools.

“The global health community needs to urgently support the strengthening of not only the curricula development of medical schools, schools of public health, and nursing schools, but even more so their management capacity and the ability of their deans and other senior leaders to play a prominent role in the health sector and HRH [human resources for health] reforms of their countries,” says Chairperson Dr. Ok Pannenborg.

Author's name:

Amanda Puckett and Richard Seifman

Publication Date:

February 2011

Removing the Blindfold: Mapping Health Worker Schools to Improve Education

jennifer — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:32:42 +0000

The transformative scale-up of health worker education can be like the game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. We know so little about health worker education that it often feels like we’re playing blindfolded.

Recognizing that we can’t really transform health worker education until we know where health schools are located, the World Health Organization organized a panel at the Second Global Forum on Human Resources for Health in Bangkok to discuss global mapping of health worker educational institutions.

I was invited to speak about the mapping of nursing schools.

Author's name:

Shaun Noronha

Publication Date:

January 2011

Conventional and Thai Traditional Medicine: Visiting Uthong Hospital

jennifer — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 16:04:51 +0000

Uthong 1

Uthong 2

Uthong 3

Uthong 4

Uthong 5

Uthong 6

Uthong 7

Uthong 8

At Uthong Hospital—a 150-bed community facility in Amphur-Uthong, Supanburi Province, Thailand—I had the opportunity to learn how the staff integrate both conventional medicine and Thai traditional therapies. Located about two hours away from Bangkok, the field trip was part of the busy week-long events at the Second Global Forum on Human Resources for Health.

Author's name:

David Nelson

Publication Date:

January 2011