By Edwin Beyan | Friends of Liberia-Liberia Health Team Leader
Friends of Liberia-Liberia Health Team
Improving Nursing and Midwifery Education and Practice in Liberia
By Edwin Beyan and Team
As the nursing/midwifery professions constitute the largest percentage of the healthcare workforce, nurses and midwives have both the opportunity and obligation to lead efforts to improve healthcare delivery system of a nation (Sherwood & Barristeiner, 2017). In order to lead these efforts, nurses and midwives need to understand how to implement improvement processes. One of the ways to do so is through continuing professional development (CPD) workshop. The CPD enables nurses and midwives to continually update and renew their knowledge, skills, attitude, and enhance evidence-based practice (Sherwood & Barristeiner, 2017)
The Friends of Liberia -Liberia Health Team (FOL-LHT), with support from Friends of Liberia-US and GlobalGiving, continues to help augment the training capacities of Liberian nursing/midwifery faculty and clinicians through Continuing Professional Development (CPD) workshop. The overarching goal of our CPD is for nursing/midwifery faculty and clinicians to maintain competencies (Oermann, 2015) so that they can provide quality and evidence-informed teaching and clinical care across the lifespan, respectively
Target Audiences: Nursing/Midwifery Faculty & Practicing Nurses/Midwives
An on-site assessment was conducted for two purposes. To evaluate how or if the 2022 workshop participants rolled-out workshop resources in their institutions. It was discovered that up to 80% of participants did so informally (such as up-loading workshop resources on faculty personal computers or institution’s desktop) or formally (through organized workshops). The latter was limited due to lack of support from participants’ institutions.
Details of Contents of the Workshop Activities
Day One: Monday, 09- Jan. 2023. Nursing/Midwifery Faculty—Based on our needs assessment and experts’ opinion from The Liberian Board for Nursing & Midwifery, the following topical outline formed the agenda for the nursing/midwifery faculty workshop. These topics included (a) Preparing to Teach, (b) Teaching Methods, (c) Test Items Analysis/Banking, (d)Test Construction, and e)Test Items Analysis. The overall goal of this session was to improve the teaching strategies and evaluation skills of the participants.
Day Two: Tuesday, Jan. 2023: On this day, faculty practiced quality test construct and item analysis based on the concept of Oermann and Gaberson (2020).
Day Three: Wednesday, 11-Jan. 2023: Joint faculty-clinicians workshop. The key objectives of this session were for faculty and clinicians to share concepts about how a) nursing/midwifery students can translate their theoretical knowledge to clinical experiences and b) young graduate nurses/midwives can team up with experienced nurses/midwives to smoothly transition to become effective and competent practicing nurses/midwives. To achieve these objectives, the following topics were presented: a) Linking theory to practice and b) Transitioning graduate nurses/midwives to practice.
Day Four. Thursday, 12-Jan. 2023 Nursing/Midwifery Clinicians
Ethics is fundamental in a good nurse-patient/client relationship, a relationship that reduces the days of patient hospital stay and improves the quality and satisfaction of the clinicians and patient (Molina-Mula & Gallo-Estrada, 2021). According to Chang et al. (2019), Africa is among the continents with highest neonatal mortality. In Liberia, the authors attribute the cause to providers facing significant challenges due to lack of resources and providers in referral centers needing adequate preparation to provide appropriate neonatal resuscitation. The author further explained that if providers in limited-resource settings are trained, there could be a potential decrease in neonatal mortality in Liberia. Hence the objectives of the clinician session were to a) enhance the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of clinicians’ ethical relationship with patient/clients and their colleagues and b) enhance skills in reducing neonatal morbidity and mortality through effective resuscitation: . To achieve these objectives, the following topics were presented:
Day five. Friday 13-Jan. 2023: On this day clinician practiced neonatal resuscitation. The President of the Liberia Nurses Association, a representative from the Office of the Chief Nursing/Midwifery Officer, and the participants discussed issues pertinent to improvement of quality nursing/midwifery care in Liberia.
Summary
With support from Friends of Liberia-US and GlobalGiving, the FOL-LHT conducted its 4th annual workshop at the Phebe Paramedical Training School in Gbarnga, Bong County. Twenty-one faculty from Liberian Board for Nursing/Midwifery accredited schools and twenty-one nurses/midwives from twenty-one major/regional hospitals attended the workshop. In attendance were the President of the Liberian Nurses Association and a representative from the office of the Chief Nursing/Midwifery Officer of Liberian Board for Nursing and Midwifery.
References
Oermann, M. H. (2015). Teaching in nursing and role of the educator: the complete guide to best
practice in teaching, evaluation, and curriculum development. Springer
Publishing Company.
Oermann, M.H. & Gaberson, K.B. & (2017). Evaluation and testing in nursing education.
Springer Publishing Company.
Molina-Mula, J. and Gallo-Estrada, J. (2020). Impact of Nurse-Patient Relationship on Quality
of Care and Patient Autonomy in Decision-Making. International Journal of
Environmental Research and Public Health. 45(5), 961-978. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3546
Chang, M.P., Walters, B. C., Tsai, C., Aksamit, D., Keteh, F., and Sampson, J. (2019).
Evaluation of a Neonatal Resuscitation Curriculum in Liberia. Children (Basel) 6(4), 56. http:// doi:10.3390/children6040056
Sherwood, G. & Barnsteiner (2017). Quality and Safety in Nursing. A competency approach to
Improving outcome. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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