What HIFA2015 members say
Meeting the information needs of nurses and midwives
Please find below extracts from messages sent on the HIFA2015 email forum.
“Meeting the goals and targets of MDG 4 and 5 is not an easy task unless we continue sharing global information and lessons learnt as in this forum.
Matilda Bannerman Wulff, Midwife, DanMat/Mercy Maternity Home, Ghana
1. Understanding information needs
“The ones needing the information most are the nurses and the Community health workers in the rural health settings including the “Urban Poor areas.”
Mary Roroi, Papua New Guinea (August 2008)
“I am involved in training of nurses and midwives through e-learning and one of the challenged we are faced with is getting supplementary e-materials for the students. These nurses/midwives work in remote areas and have no internet access. We will really appreciate such like CDs and videos for
the students. Especially: Child Health Research, Community nutrition, Maternal and Child Health, Neurology teaching resource for African students, Obstetric and gynaecological Emergencies, Schistosomiasis. Do you have any material on the Nursing Process?”
Angela Nguku, Kenya (November 2008)
“Midwives and nurses are “the key workers if the MDGs are to be achieved”. One addition to this aspect is that they are the only qualified professionals who tend to always find themselves where most other professionals do not want to be found. They see themselves in the so called “hard to reach areas” where there is nothing except people who need their care. No library, no telephone, no water sometimes no shops even and to crown it all no transport to go anywhere - not even to transfer patients to a distant hospital somewhere.”
Nester Moyo, Netherlands (July 2008)
“So often the majority of the books, if any are available, are 10 or more years out of date and are not regularly used. Few if any schools have any books in sufficient quantity to allow a whole intake of students to study from them.”
David Morley, UK (March 2008)
“There is lack of a system to update nurses/midwives in private and public practice about the development in Maternal and Child Health were by when challenged are not in position to clarify and support safe motherhood. (No access to technology, refresher courses, literature, support supervision of their facilities etc) Traditional birth attendant are also diluting our messages about family planning for they fear when mothers embrace family planning, they will automatically lose their employment.”
David Muwonge, Uganda (October 2008)
2. Undertaking and publishing relevant health research
No comments.
3. Synthesizing knowledge
“For the nurses I am working with, the information in the books are either out dated, irrelevant or not practical. As a result, I have decided to convert nurses’ training materials or manuals onto CDs. The CD content will be simple but will be interactive… This is an initiative I am very interested and excited to undertake. I am presently at the initial stage. The 1st training material I am working on is Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV. This is because there is a dying need for it from our nurses, mostly those in the remote and rural clinics.”
Flora Asah, South Africa (June 2008)
“In Burkina Faso, we well appreciated HINARI and we are very grateful for access to this source of knowledge that we couln’t ever subscribe. However, HINARI could be more useful for nurses and low-level health personal from French speaking countries (14?) of Africa who need really information but they can not read English. In Burkina Faso, these persons are authorised to diagnose and prescribe treatments in villages where there are no doctors. HINARI does not contain the basic and most popular periodicals in French.”
Pascal Soubeiga, Burkina Faso (October 2008)
4. Making knowledge available
“Indeed they “rarely have access to books” in my observation and opinion by virtue of where they work. No-one wants to take books there except the ICN mobile library which has gone some way to improve on this. But even that library, needs roads to be taken to some of the areas where midwives and nurses work.”
Nester Moyo, Netherlands (July 2008)
“Rather than trying to get books into their hands, in some circumstances it might be more sensible to try to get cell phones into their hands. With that tool they could consult with well-informed people (perhaps in the capital city) for immediate guidance on how to deal with the case in front of them.”
George Kent, USA (August 2008)
“I suggest that the nearest general practitioner, whether in government or in private should be empowered to give the nurse or midwife academic and information support. At least As has been suggested, teleconferencing will work. Telephones work in rural Zimbabwe. I should know. I worked there for 2 years.”
Olayinka O. Ayankogbe, Nigeria (August 2008)
“Through our health link in Ethiopia (www.ethiopiagwentlink.org) we have provided three rural health centres, serving a population of nearly 300,000, each with PCs loaded with CD training materials. We have also taught them how to use the computers. Evaluation shows the health workers greatly value this support with extending their knowledge base and readily available reference library when difficult situation arise in isolated and remote locations.”
Biku Ghosh, UK (August 2008)
“Books on the whole contain the basic content of a subject in the training of students of medicine, nursing and health care, whereas CD-ROMs provide details of specific practices or recent advances needed by those in practice. I can quite imagine that in a rural hospital the main need is to keep up with these latter. In preliminary training institutes I would think that books are still the best tool to cover all the subjects being studied. Certainly in the medical school in Africa which I visited recently the cry was for textbooks.”
Paget Stanfield, UK (October 2008)
“There is a need for an additional 334,000 midwives, according to the World
Health Organization. It is estimated that skilled attendance at delivery, backed up by emergency obstetric care, could reduce the number of women dying in pregnancy and childbirth by about 75 per cent. The new UNFPA-ICM midwifery programme will increase the number of births attended by professional midwifery providers and develop the foundations for a sustainable midwifery workforce in selected developing countries. Its focus will be on training midwives and strengthening midwifery education, developing practice standards, and developing and strengthening national midwifery associations.”
[Forwarded from GANM] (October 2008)
“Nursing and Midwifery by Hubband and Hamilton Brown Barber and published by Macmillan. This was written by African and European tutors with long experience as tutors in African Nurse and Midwifery training schools and is probably the first internationally available textbook written specifically for the circumstance that present to nurses working in Africa. It is written in appropriate English, well illustrated and is over 400 pages in length with an emphasis on prevention….”
David Morley, UK (February 2008)
“Where donors can be found TALC supplies a collection of material to each school. This includes one copy of the above two books to every 2 students of those entering the school at one time… TALC has a large collection of ‘free’ material including books, newsletters, and CDs which are included…. TALC has supplied some schools in the Sudan and Ethiopia and most recently sent out to 10 schools in Tanzania.”
David Morley, UK (August 2008)
5. Applying knowledge
“We always ignore the field of reading in Africa. In fact, reading is increasingly seen as an additional constraint in Africa. The book is no longer an effective tool to convey information. I had this experience during our training sessions in rural hospitals. The books that we gave to the medical staff were never read by them.”
Bruno Kenne, Cameroon (October 2008)
“We noticed that the information contained in the CDROM was quickly treated by nurses. We noticed that they like the new concepts because those concepts are easy to use. Information CDROM is easy to use, easy to understand when it comes with tutorials and practical when there is a PC in the hospital… We intend to distribute 2000 CDROM to 100 hospitals where there are computers and electricity.”
Bruno Kenne, Cameroon (October 2008)
“Where midwives and nurses are in a slightly different situations where there are libraries and telephones and transport etc, their numbers are so few that it is not unusual to have a midwife or a nurse working 12 hours a day. I wonder how many of them still have the energy to pick a book and make a meaningful study. Ironically, they are the people who need to this most because they may be the only care giver in the area. So for the care given to be meaningful and save lives as it is intended to, this person MUST keep up to date. But alas, the circumstances… When the salary of the midwife or nurse who is working 12 hours a day comes it is not enough to take him/her to work, so after working 12 hours in the health institution, this person must “do something else” to complement or supplement (whichever is the correct word) the salary. My impression is that giving a person in this circumstance a book or the best information produced to better themselves up or to improve the quality of care and expecting the to read with relish is probably expecting too much…. My sincere suggestion therefore is to have this forum contribute to what can relieve the burdens of midwives and nurses so that they too can have TIME to read and study and make themselves more effective.”
Nester Moyo, Netherlands (July 2008)
6. Measuring impact
“TALC’s immediate concern is to get feedback from the schools as to how the books are used and the student’s reaction to the availability of this material.”
David Morley, UK (March 2008)
Contributors
FLORA ASAH is a Health Information Researcher at the Centre for Rural Health (CRH), University of KwaZulu Natal, Medical School Campus. CRH provides support through education, training and research to Primary Health Care facilities, district hospitals and clinics.
OLAYINKA O. AYANKOGBE is a Senior Lecturer in Family Medicine at the Department of Community Health & Primary Care, College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Nigeria. His interests are in Primary Health Care, Adolescent care, quality improvement and Public/Private partnerships and ICPC-2 (International Classification of Primary Care).
BIKU GHOSH is a Consultant Surgeon in Wales, Coordinator of the Southern Ethiopia Gwent Health Link and currently Chairman of the Wales for Africa Health Links Group.
BRUNO KENNE is a telecommunication engineer based in Cameroon. He works with Labotel, a Cameroonian NGO in the ehealth domain. The NGO is using mobile clinic for teleconsultation, telediagnosis in maternal and child care, and training of doctor and nurses in rural areas
in Cameroon.
GEORGE KENT is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Hawaii.
DAVID MORLEY is President of Teaching-aids At Low Cost, a UK-based non-governmental organisation. He is also Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Child Health, London. He is involved in selecting material for TALC to distribute, and resources for inclusion on TALC free CD-ROMs.
NESTER MOYO is a programme manager with the International Confederation of Midwives, The Netherlands. She is a midwife from Zimbabwe and has extensive experience in midwifery and midwifery education.
DAVID MUWONGE is a Registered nurse, working with Naminya community outreach and nursing home, also volunteering at the Uganda Private Nurses Association as a CME coordinator, he is enrolled for a BScN program at the Aga Khan University, Kampala, Uganda.
ANGELA NGUKU is the co-ordinator of AMREF’s nurses’ upgrading programme, an example of how ICTs can improve learning. The project, which began as a pilot in 2004, aims at upgrading nurses from Enrolled Community Health Nurses/Midwives to Registered Community Health Nurses/Midwives. Angela is a member of the White Ribbon Alliance for safe motherhood and is currently pioneering the establishment of the White Ribbon Alliance (National Chapter) for Safe Motherhood in Kenya. She has been working in the area of Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health, a field for which she has passion. AMREF (African Medical Research Foundation) mission is ‘committed to improving health and healthcare in Africa’. AMREF aims to ensure that every African can enjoy the right to good health, by helping to create vibrant networks of informed and empowered communities and healthcare providers working together in strong health systems.
MARY ROROI is Acting Director of Human Resources at the National Department of Health, Waigani, Papua New Guinea.
PAGET STANFIELD is a retired paediatrician with an interest in the availability of learning materials and textbooks for medical students and postgraduates in developing countries. He has a long
experience in Africa, particularly with the Makerere University, Uganda, and AMREF. Paget is editor of the textbook, Diseases of Children in the Tropics.
